


Give a Dog a Bone

by Laura Kaye (laurakaye)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amputee Phil Coulson, Anger Management, Canon Disabled Character, Clint Barton & Kate Bishop Friendship, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Barton & Tony Stark Friendship, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Complicated Relationships, Daisy To The Rescue, Deaf Clint Barton, Dog Cops, Donuts, Emotional Constipation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feels, Fix-It, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Marvel 616/MCU Crossover, Minor Kate Bishop/America Chavez, Minor Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, POV Clint Barton, Passive-aggression, Phil Coulson & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Phil Coulson Needs a Hug, Phil Coulson's Robot Hand, Pining, Prosthesis, Protective Skye | Daisy Johnson, Reunions, Tony Is a Good Bro, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, partially canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 20:44:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 86,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5942521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurakaye/pseuds/Laura%20Kaye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do you do when your dead best friend turns up alive after three years?<br/>a) yell at him<br/>b) hug him<br/>c) ignore him to his face while following him around the Tower like a creeper<br/>d) maybe fall in love with him a little<br/>e) all of the above</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Worst Good News

**Author's Note:**

> In between seasons 2 and 3 of Agents of SHIELD, I set out to write a short fix-it with the working title "robot hand porn." Then... it grew into the monster you see before you. The story is almost completely drafted, and I'll be posting the chapters as I get them betaed and edited, at a rate of at least one a week.
> 
> This is set, as my stories usually are, in a 616/MCU mashup universe. It is canon-compliant with Agents of SHIELD through the end of season 2 and canon-compliant with the Avengers films except that instead of a farm and a secret family Clint has a building in Brooklyn and shares joint custody of a one-eyed dog with Kate Bishop.
> 
> Thank you to Kathar for beta and Faeleverte for cheerleading and helping me talk through plot issues!

The whole thing starts at two o’clock in the afternoon, one random Tuesday in August.

Well, okay, that isn’t really true. Actually, if you’re going to be accurate—and accuracy is kind of Clint’s deal—the whole thing actually started the year before, when Cap found out that SHIELD was rotten and Tony convinced Clint to let him hire a super and some security for his building. The rationale had been that Clint would have more time to dedicate to his Avenging, but Clint’s always thought it was really so he would stay in the Tower more, because Tony never says it but he’s kind of overprotective of people once he notices they exist and decides he likes them.

Or maybe the whole thing started before that, when Clint’s world dissolved in blue. Or maybe it was years earlier still, when Clint looked around himself and realized that an assassin and a secret agent had become his family. Or when he joined SHIELD, or when he ran away from the circus, or when he ran away _to_ the circus…

Okay, forget about accuracy for a minute.

After the whole Ultron situation, Clint’s the only one besides Tony who still stays at the Tower pretty frequently. Maria sends him on missions sometimes, alone or in groups with some of the others, but he tends to come back to the city instead of going with Nat and Cap to run the probies through their paces upstate. The thing is, Tony doesn’t do so well when he’s alone, and with Rhodey Avenging and Pepper flying all over to run the company and Bruce… gone, he’s alone a lot. 

He hasn’t talked about it much, but Tony’s taking the whole Bruce thing really hard. Not that they aren’t all taking it hard, of course, but Clint and Nat still have each other and Thor has his Nobel Laureate girlfriend and space kingdom and Cap has, you know, truth, justice, and his quixotic crusade to hug the crazy out of the Winter Soldier. Or whatever it is he and Nat and Sam keep whispering to each other about in corners. 

Clint’s not judging. Something similar worked on him, after all.

The point is that he’s just chilling on the common floor (now 87% more shatterproof!) when Tony’s new AI who sounds like Sinead O’Connor says, “Agent Barton, could you spare a moment?”

He pauses the movie he’s half-watching. “Sure, what’s up?”

“We have an unexpected visitor asking to see Mr. Stark—” Clint’s already moving, pulling his emergency gun out from under the couch and running to the palmprint scanner that will open the panel with his spare bow and quiver—“and he’d like you to join them. She said she wanted to speak to him about Agent Phil Coulson.”

Clint freezes, skidding a little with momentum on the slick floor, hand clenching around his bow. “What?” His voice comes out airless, his throat suddenly high and tight. That’s the last thing he’d have expected; killer robots, weapons of mass destruction, contempt of Congress, sure, lots of people wanted to talk to Tony about that shit, but… Phil? Now, after all this time?

“Her name wasn’t on any of our lists,” FRIDAY continues, seemingly unaware of how hard Clint’s freaking out right now, “but my checks indicate that she flew in from Portland this morning. One of her past employers is the Oregon Symphony. Given these facts, Mr. Stark believes she’s—”

“I know what Mr. Stark believes.” He tries to steady his breathing. “Slim woman? Long brown hair?”

“Yes.” Of course. How many _other_ female musicians from Portland who knew Phil Coulson could there be? Pull yourself together, Barton.

“Where is she?”

“I’ve put her in the small conference room on the forty-second floor. Mr. Stark will meet you there.”

“I’m on my way.” He runs. He can’t help it; he can’t think of any good reason for Audrey to come here, and especially not asking for Tony. He can think of a fuckload of bad reasons, though. His gut is churning. Phil had never been the kind of guy who brought a date to the company picnic, but he’d actually introduced Audrey to Clint and Natasha, and when she’d moved away he’d looked sad for like a month. That in itself should have been enough for Clint to make sure she was okay, but the truth was that after Phil had died he’d barely spared her a thought. Now, he’s sick with guilt. Phil had never doubted that Clint would do the right thing. He had died sure of it, Nat had said, certain that Clint was salvageable. If something had happened to Audrey because Clint didn’t—  

He skids into the elevator, because in cases like this the elevator can actually go faster than he can unless he uses a grapple arrow. FRIDAY slams the car down so fast that Clint’s heels actually leave the floor for a second.

The conference room door is standing open.  He can hear Tony’s voice going a mile a minute, light and seemingly unconcerned, failing entirely to cover the thread of tension underneath.

“—admit that I’m surprised. We never knew your name, and we looked, so to have you show up now…”

“Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Stark. I wouldn’t take up your time unless it was important.” 

Clint’s breath catches, and he hurries his steps, nocking and drawing and holding as he bursts into the room, where—

“Barton, what the fuck?” Tony splutters.

“Back away from her,” he orders.

“Hey, hey, easy, everyone calm down,” says the perfect stranger sitting at the conference table.

“ _Clint,_ this is Daisy Johnson, she’s—”

“Not who you think she is.” He makes his bow creak for dramatic effect, the broadhead pointed right into one of the woman’s wide brown eyes. “You have three seconds to explain what you’re doing here and what you did to Audrey, or I start shooting.”

“What I—I didn’t do anything to Audrey!” she’s shaking her head, hands up and open, body language submissive. “Audrey’s fine! I just spoofed her profile so you’d let me up here. I just want to talk! I swear, Agent Barton, I just want to _talk._ ”  

Tony’s wary at his side, now, hands poised to call his suit, carefully not blocking Clint’s shot. He’s done a lot of work to make sure Hawkeye’s identity stayed classified. “How’d you know who he is, _Daisy?_ If that’s actually your name.”

She makes a weird face, a little wistful and a little wry. “It… kind of is? But not legally. Well. Honestly, I’m not sure if I even _have_ a name anymore, legally. I kind of deleted it last year while I was on the run from Hydra.” She takes a deep breath. “My name _is_ really Daisy, but I used to go by Skye. I’m an agent of SHIELD.”

“SHIELD’s dead.” Tony’s not giving any ground, which is good, because Clint’s still way too freaked out to do much negotiating.

“So’s Nick Fury, but that hasn’t stopped _him_ from doing anything lately.” She meets Clint’s eyes, a steady, accepting look. A kind look, but something about it makes him ache. “So’s Phil Coulson.” 

Tony turns his head toward Clint, wide-eyed. Clint isn’t sure what kind of noise he just made.

“When it comes to SHIELD,” Daisy continues, and now Clint knows why he hates that patient, even tone; it’s because it shouldn’t be _her_ voice using it. “Dead’s kind of a flexible category.” 

"Bullshit," Tony snaps. "I don't buy it. Hill came here, Fury can't stay away, but you’re telling me that after everything that’s happened, Mr. _I Believe In Heroes_ just rode it out on a beach somewhere?”

“Of course not!” She’s being held at arrow-point by Hawkeye, but she’s not giving an inch; she actually rolls her eyes at them, and Clint can’t help a pang of reluctant admiration. “God, you really are self-obsessed, aren’t you?” she demands. “Where the fuck did you think that helicarrier in Sokovia came from, Goodwill?” And of course, of fucking _course,_ it had never quite sat well with Clint for that to be Fury; the man who had made a habit of pulling that kind of thing out of his ass with a smug grin was—

“An old friend,” Tony murmurs. He’s gone pale. “That _motherfucker_.” Clint’s not sure whether he means Fury or Phil or both. Probably both. Clint’ll cosign for both.

“That still doesn’t explain why you’re here,” he says. “Sure, maybe you know SHIELD business. Lots of people that’s true of, these days. You come in here, throw his name around, spin a story and get us to drop our guard, then what? Contact poison on the doorknobs? Gas canister in the HVAC? Homing beacon for a robot army?”

“Please, not another robot army,” Tony says.

“And I thought May was paranoid,” she mutters, just at the edge of being too soft for Clint’s hearing aid to pick up. Her face creases in annoyance for a moment before she very obviously takes a deep breath to try again. 

(“I know you’re frustrated, Barton, but help me understand,” a calm voice whispers in Clint’s memory. “Stop for a minute, take a deep breath, and start from the beginning.”)

“Look,” Daisy says, “I know you guys are probably not in the most trusting mood right now, so what can I say to get you to believe that I’m really just here for completely non-evil reasons? I only ever had Level One clearance, so I probably don’t know any really convincing codes or anything, but I’ve been working with Coulson for two years. I could tell you things about him, maybe? Stuff that wouldn’t be in the files?”

“Like what?” Clint’s half afraid and half desperate to hear what she’ll come up with.

“He has this collection of old spy stuff that he’s super nerdy about,” she says, and Clint starts relaxing his draw almost involuntarily. “He knows everything about Captain America and the Howling Commandos. He comes across all super-G-man at first, but once he gets to know you he starts making terrible dad jokes. He has a flying car named Lola that he won’t let anybody touch except him. He gets weird if you hug him but he always tries to give you food when he’s worried about you.”

Clint’s bow is all the way down, now. “What kind of food?” he asks through the lump in his throat.

“When Jemma—” her voice catches on the name; she clears her throat and keeps going. “Was undercover with Hydra, she said he brought her kale and fussed at her because all she had in her fridge was beer and Sriracha. But he had to put me in—um, a safehouse one time, and I was upset about it, and he sent me like a case of Little Debbie cakes and a bunch of those terrible mini-donuts.”

“What flavor donuts?” Clint knows what she’ll say. He knows.

“Powered sugar and chocolate covered. Well, ‘chocolatey’ covered.” She makes little finger quotes, and Clint puts the arrow back in his quiver. He feels—he’s not sure how he feels, whether the boulder in his chest is relief or rage or hurt or joy. Tony’s looking between Clint and Daisy, eyes narrow and sharp.

“So, what, are the donuts some kind of passcode?” he asks, and Clint barks out a rusty laugh.

“Nah,” he says. “Just, he could never decide which to get, so he always ended up with both.” He sniffs, and Tony ignores it, because Tony’s a great bro sometimes.

“So,” Tony says, voice bright and brittle, “Leaving aside the many, many questions we all have about why Agent faked his own death and lied for years—and Captain America is going to be _very disappointed_ in such base dishonesty—why has he picked now to come out of whatever secret SHIELD closet he’s been hiding in?”

Daisy bristles. “Don’t talk about him like that,” she says, and fuck, if Clint hadn’t already been convinced that would have convinced him, because there’s nobody else who can make his people so stupidly protective without even realizing he’s done it. “He didn’t do it on purpose,” Daisy continues. “He really did die in the Battle of New York, and I’m not talking one of those things where you code for five seconds, I’m talking all the way dead, for like a week—”

“Bullshit,” Clint interrupts, sick and reeling. “The _fuck_ he was, I don’t care what kind of line they spun you, girly, but there is no way—”

“He _was!_ ” she shouts. “He told me himself, and you didn’t see his _face_ , he was really fucked up about it! SHIELD apparently had this secret program—”

“Of course they did,” Tony sinks back down into one of the conference room chairs, pushing it back on its wheels two feet with the force of his dramatic slump. Clint freezes, suddenly remembering the months before New York, a project Phil couldn’t talk about, meetings that he came out of looking worn and grey.

“Anyway, long story short, “ Daisy says, waving her hand impatiently, “Director Fury brought him back to life with mad science. It was all really traumatic and he lost a lot of his memory, and he thought he might go crazy, and then HYDRA happened and Fury made Coulson the Director of SHIELD, and we’ve been really really busy since then trying not to get killed by anybody. And a _lot_ of people have been trying,” she finishes, rushing the words like she’s afraid of being cut off. “And he didn’t send me; he doesn’t know I’m here. I came because he needs your help, Mr. Stark, and he’d never ask it for himself.” She half turns, rummaging in a bag that’s slung over the back of her chair and coming out with a file that she slaps down on the conference table. She flips it open and starts shuffling through, and Clint catches a series of X-rays, medical charts, and what looks like engineering diagrams before she settles on a large color photograph, a man’s left arm lying atop blankets. The curve of strong bicep emerging from a pale blue hospital gown is sprinkled with freckles, and there’s a familiar scar pattern just above the elbow that Clint knows; a knife fight in Manchester, a deep slice from where the knife had deflected off Phil’s vest into his arm. A lucky blow, really, though the guy had gone down with Clint’s arrow in his throat immediately afterward, so it’d been the last luck he’d ever had. Below the elbow, though—Clint’s eyes keep trying to slide off, Clint’s brain is trying not to take it in, but below the elbow there’s bandages, thick bandages, but not thick enough to hide the huge swath of nothing where the hand—fuck, where _Phil’s hand_ should be.

“Can you make him a robot hand?” Daisy asks Tony, and Clint can’t breathe; whatever Tony says in response is lost as he slams out of the conference room and runs to the stairs and up to the penthouse and outside, out onto the balcony where Tony usually lands the suit, and it’s not until he’s out on the narrow catwalk that runs behind the giant A that his throat relaxes enough to get some air.

He’s out there for—a while, let’s just say a while—before he hears Tony’s voice, that conspicuously nonchalant voice he uses when he’s trying not to show that something’s important, over-enunciating his words so that Clint doesn’t have to look at his lips to understand.

“You know, house rules clearly state that safety harnesses are mandatory for anyone who goes past the red line without either a suit or a jetpack,” Tony says. He’s hovering two feet away from Clint, because of course he is.

Clint holds up the grappling line he’s got wound around one of the support struts of the A. He’s heard enough lectures from Cap on the topic to last a lifetime, thanks.

Tony settles on the catwalk beside Clint, and say what you will about Tony but the man’s a damn good pilot. The kind of precision he manages with whatever eye-twitch and micro-movement navigation system he’s got in those suits is impressive. The catwalk creaks but stays firm; Tony wouldn’t have a place on his own building that wasn’t safe for him to land.

He raises the faceplate of the suit, but doesn’t turn to look at Clint. The two of them just sit there for awhile, staring out over the city. It’s a nice day. Not too hot, bit of a breeze. Seems like it’s always a nice day when things fall apart.

“It’s a hell of a thing,” Tony says at last, about two minutes after he’d started twitching at the silence. Clint appreciates the effort. “You going to call Romanoff?”

“I—maybe,” Clint says. “I don’t know. I mean, she needs to know. The team needs to know. But—” he shakes his head, unable to put it into words. Telling Nat seems too big, somehow. It would make it too real. He kind of just wants to stay here on this nice comfy catwalk (it isn’t comfy) and not think for a while, because when he thinks all he can think about is _dead for a week_ and _mad science_ and three years of pointless grief.

“I got the feeling you three were all roommates at SHIELD sleepaway camp,” Tony continues.

“We worked together,” Clint tells him, and the understatement is so vast it almost makes him smile. “Just me and Nat, and Phil to run the ops. STRIKE Team Delta. Smallest STRIKE team in SHIELD history, and the highest mission success rate.”

“And you tried to tell us you weren’t much for teams.” Tony’s voice is still so careful. It’s nice of him. Somewhere under the layers of churning emotion, Clint appreciates it, that’s he’s trying so hard.

“Wasn’t a _team_ , not really.” Clint’s voice has gotten thick, and his view of the horizon is getting blurry. He ignores it, and so does Tony. “Family’s closer, but not even that. It was more like—like being one person with three heads and six arms.”

“And twenty-seven guns, I’m guessing.”

“Guns, knives, arrows, flashbombs, grenades, broken bottles, random shit we found on the street…” Clint chuckles, and it hurts his throat and it’s a relief. “Phil didn’t look it, but he was a hell of a dirty fighter. Doesn’t. Doesn’t look it. _Shit._ ” He scrubs his hands down his face, tastes bile in the back of his throat. “I thought—no. Doesn’t matter. Looks like to him we were just another squad.”

Tony sighs. “Don’t get me wrong, Barton,” he says. “I am pissed as hell over this shit, but if our mystery visitor down there’s telling even half the truth, you maybe shouldn’t jump to any conclusions about Coulson’s motivations in this mess.”

Clint wants so badly for that to be true—for there to be a reason besides _not giving a shit_ for Phil to do this to him and Nat—that it’s almost frightening. “Yeah?”

“Those medical files she brought? Disturbing shit, and that’s _before_ you get to the part where he just got his hand chopped off with an axe,” Tony says, and Clint jerks so hard he pulls the grappling line tight, his gut lurching at the thought of—of Phil’s hand and— 

“Whoa!” Tony’s grabbing him, gauntlet tightening around Clint’s arm. “Sorry, sorry, that was insensitive of me. Sorry. I just meant—hell, you know I’m hardly the chair of the Human Subjects Review Committee, but the stuff Fury pulled to bring Coulson back, even I would have given it the side-eye. So maybe we need to think about cutting him a little bit of slack in the _avoiding difficult conversations_ department.” 

Clint’s quickly going from shocked and hurt to actively freaking the fuck out, because Tony is a lot of things, but scientifically conservative is _not_ one of them. 

“What the fuck did they _do_ to him?” he demands, heart pounding.

The armor whirs a little as Tony shifts, way more of a tell than he usually allows himself when he’s suited up. He turns his face away again, staring out over the skyline. “Maybe we should go inside for this conversation.”

“Tony.” Clint’s hand is reaching out without any input from his brain, as though he could pull the answers right out of him. It’s trembling, gone clammy with adrenaline, and he pulls it back, clenches it into a fist to hold it still. “Please.”

Tony sighs. “They revived his week-old corpse with some kind of alien juice they’d had sitting around in a bunker for God knows how long—since Roswell, probably,” he says, and Clint’s actually glad for the fucking line, because without it he might have fallen off the building just then. Tony either doesn’t notice or is pretending not to, and keeps on talking with the air of a man ripping off the duct tape. “Apparently all the previous alien-juice test subjects—because naturally there were some, because _that_ always ends well—ended up going nuts. So to try to avoid _that_ , they wiped his memory and made him think he’d been having a nice long recovery on a beach—as though that wouldn’t make him suspicious right off the bat; I’ve seen SHIELD’s budget, you guys were lucky if you got three weeks in a rehab center in Paramus.”

Clint wraps his arms around himself, hunching a little over the knot of pain in his chest. It doesn’t help much. “I can tell that’s not everything,” he says through gritted teeth. “Go on.”

“There’s a lot more. Fury sent him off to head some kind of mobile team based off a jet—”

Clint snorts, despite everything. “He always wanted one of those,” he says. His voice is almost not bitter. “Downside of being a small team, he could never get the reqs approved.”

“Yeah, well, reading between the lines, I suspect Fury knew something bad was in the air and wanted to keep Coulson back as his ace in the hole,” Tony says, “but also, apparently his team was there to take him out in case the alien juice finally sent him off.”

“Fuck,” Clint mutters. Phil must have found out, for Daisy to know. Phil cared about SHIELD so much, about his people: it would have hurt him, to know that his team—that _Fury_ , who’d always been his friend—were treating him like he was suspicious, like he’d been compromised. He would have had no one.

He could have had _Clint,_ Clint and Nat and probably all the others too. He could have had them with a single call, and he’d never made it. Honestly, it almost makes it worse, to hear that Phi—that _Coulson_ had gone through so much and that none of it was enough for him to come to them.

“And then one of the team turned out to be Hydra, so that was its own giant pot of shit stew,” Tony continues.

“Must not have been that bad,” Clint snaps, “Given that he apparently had time to get back with his old girlfriend but he never even thought to call me and Nat.”

Tony heaves a sigh. “Yeah, apparently he didn’t so much _get back with her_ as _save her life secretly and never let on he was there_ ,” he says. “I pushed Daisy about it a little after you left. She said there was some guy with electricity powers that escaped from SHIELD custody when the whole Hydra thing went down?”

“Yeah,” Clint says. “Some kind of music fetishist or something, I dunno. ’S how they met.”

“So, yeah, he didn’t tell her either, apparently, if it helps.”

“I don’t know if it makes it better or worse,” Clint says. “We would have helped him. He has to know we would have come in a minute, so why…” he trails off, making a helpless gesture.

“I honestly can’t believe I’m saying this,” Tony says. “But I’m going to ask you to consider a hypothetical situation.”

“You’re between me and the balcony, Stark.” Clint gestures expansively at his path, blocked by 500 pounds of gold/titanium-plated billionaire. “I ain’t leaving.”

“Right.” Tony sucks in a deep breath. “So. In our line of work, you wonder, right, when is it going to happen? Is this going to be the time that does it, is this when I go out? Will I get the Hollywood death or am I going to die doing something stupid? Will they build statues of me? Will there be parades of mourners over my heroic corpse like the end of _Evita_?”

Clint clears his throat pointedly.

“Just me? Right. But the rest, though? You wonder. Did I do enough? Did I make it right?”

Clint thinks of Natasha, the red in her ledger. He thinks of Bruce, feverish and shaking with guilt and grief in the Quinjet. He thinks of Tony, building and working and running himself into the ground trying to prepare for a threat that he thinks he’s the only one afraid of. He thinks of Cap, fingers smudged with a thousand pictures of ghosts, killing punching bags and never looking lighter for it.

“Yeah,” he says. “We wonder.”

“So picture it. That moment comes, and you _do_ go out a hero. You save people. You defy a mad god. You inspire a team of superheroes to fight in your name. Statue _confirmed_ , you die _knowing_ that. And then… you wake up again, and the people you trust tell you nobody can know. And you aren’t right, your body, your brain, something’s off, you can _tell_ , but nobody believes you. And maybe you start to wonder, what’s so terrible that they can’t tell me?” His voice gets quiet, and Clint thinks maybe he’s not 100% just talking about Phil. “What have I become?”

“So you say ‘fuck the secrets’ and you go to the people you know you can trust,” Clint grits out. “The people you’ve _saved_ , the people who have saved you, who know—”

“Really?” Tony cuts him off. “Your most important people? The ones who mourned you as a hero? You go to them and maybe risk them? Risk hurting them? Risk them looking at you and seeing a monster? Because I know a little something about that, and in my case it ended in omelets and explosions and Natasha stabbing me in the neck. Put yourself in his place, Barton.”

Clint tries. He thinks of how he felt after Loki, deliberately brings out the memories he usually pushes to the darkest corner of his mind. He imagines that instead of Nat bringing him out of it, maybe Fury managed to capture him, stash him in a cell until Loki was brought down. Maybe they’d have thought he died in the first incursion of Pegasus, crushed in the rubble saving the Director’s life. 

In real life, it had taken months for Clint to stop flinching away from people, terrified he’d hurt them; to stop waking, screaming, from nightmares of his hands doing unspeakable things. He imagines being left alone to muddle through it, knowing that Nat and Phil had given him a hero’s burial. He imagines being told that they could never know, being shuttled aside with a team who were really his minders. He imagines being a ghost.

He would have wanted them, he knows. He would have _ached_ for them. But Tony’s right: he wouldn’t have told.

He lets out a long breath. It turns into more of a sob at the end, but they both ignore it.

“Okay,” he says. “All right. Okay. I’ll try.”

“Good,” Tony says. “Can we go inside now? You’re freaking FRIDAY out, she’s still not used to your shenanigans. Heh. Freaky FRIDAY.”

“Yeah, fine,” Clint says. He feels washed out and used-up, like he might float away on the next gust of wind. “I’m still pissed off, though.”

“Oh absolutely,” Tony says. “We’re going to make him grovel.”

“What?” Clint should be used to this by now, but he pauses in the middle of winding up his grappling line to stare at Tony.

“Yeah, I kind of promised Agent Not-A-Cellist in there that I’d build Coulson a robot hand,” Tony says. “And he’ll need to be here for me to do it. So, um, yay? Closure?”

“Oh.” Clint tries to imagine what that will be like, seeing Phil again, moving through the Tower, talking, living. The picture won’t form in his mind. He thinks distantly that he should probably be panicking; honestly, though, he’s been through so many emotional 180s in the last few hours that he can’t get upset anymore. He thinks he’s temporarily exhausted his adrenaline reserves. 

A thought occurs to him, and he blinks. “Now we _really_ need to call Natasha.”


	2. Videoconferencing is Overrated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's something of a good news/bad news situation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Kathar for beta above the call of duty, performed while miserably ill. You are the BEST and deserve the very finest waffles.

Clint is normally not what you'd call an introspective guy. It's not that he can't be—not that he hasn't been, sometimes—but his life has not exactly afforded him a lot of opportunities for what Bruce calls “mindfulness” and Pepper calls “self-actualization.” He tends to think of it as getting the fuck over himself, and if he asked Nat he thinks she’d probably roll her eyes at him and drag him down to the gym to spar until his aching muscles drown out his mind. (To be fair, that works really well most of the time.) 

The point is, Clint learned pretty early in his life that you can dwell on things or you can move the fuck on, right? And it's not like dwelling on your problems _helps_. Clint's always believed that the sooner you can get yourself thinking about something else, the sooner you'll be able to leave your shit behind you, go on to something else. Maybe, if you’re lucky, something better.

That's how it works in theory, anyway. Clint’s problems have a nasty habit of not letting themselves be left, not entirely, clinging to his nightmares like gum to the bottom of his shoe. But he’s pretty good about keeping them confined to the corners of his mind. Plus, the whole part where his job actually involves shooting stuff on the regular has been nicely cathartic in the past.

Unfortunately, shooting stuff doesn't help much when you're using it to try to get over your trauma over having shot the wrong stuff.

People. When you've shot the wrong _people_. Fuck.

He knows that the whole thing where he's flippant about shit that matters is a coping mechanism. SHIELD does—did—actually take PTSD seriously and has—had—a really good psych department, and that’s not even getting into the mental health options available to him on the Stark dime. Clint's gone to his share of therapy over the years, and he even found it helpful. Unfortunately, none of it really gave him the tools to deal with his current situation. 

It wasn’t that he hadn’t talked about Phil in therapy; he’d talked about Phil a lot, Phil and Rosemary Wong and Joey Singh and the other twenty-three agents who died in the raid on the Helicarrier. His therapist had called it survivor’s guilt, though Clint had always thought it was really pretty standard-issue guilt-guilt, because those deaths had been at least 50% Clint’s fault—like, morally his fault, anyway. He’d been trying to get past it, though. He’d done his fucking therapy homework and worked on “building thought patterns to promote resilience” and “giving other people the agency of their choices.” He’d “allowed himself his natural grief,” which basically meant going to Coulson’s grave with Nat on important days like the day he died and the day they had their first successful mission and the first day of New York ComicCon (that he’d always talked about going to, someday when things had calmed down), and killing a bottle of vodka.

Now that he knows that grave had been empty the whole time, the whole thing’s putting a bad taste in his mouth.

Fuck Clint’s life, seriously. He used to joke about having pissed off an evil wizard, to have the shitty luck he’d had; jokes like that lose their humor once you’ve _actually_ pissed off an evil wizard. He’d wondered, sometimes, as his life lurched from Loki to the tracksuit Draculas, as he was (re)deafened and got Barney back and lost Barney again, whether Loki could have actually managed to curse him somehow no matter what Thor said was possible.

Still, though, he’d been doing pretty well. He’d gotten some sweet new hearing aids from Tony and a great referral to an OT from Pepper, and he had been finally working his way back to fairly normal function. And then Ultron had happened, and his nice fresh brain got a whole new set of nightmares, dismembered robots and crashing cities and frightened children. He didn’t think he’d ever forget the burning spike of Wanda’s grief, at that moment when her pain had been theirs, every one, each of their minds crying out for a lost brother; when Pietro’s body had been _Barney’s_ had been _Bucky’s_ had been _Clint’s_ had been _Rhodey’s_. Had been _Loki’s_ , and that had messed Clint up as much as anything else, feeling Thor’s visceral, burning loss as though it were his own, feeling his heart torn for a man…god? alien? _being,_ that he hates with everything he’s got. 

Wanda’d tried to apologize, later, for her lapse in control, but Clint hadn’t been able to stay around long enough to listen to Cap give her one of his achingly sincere speeches about how they’d all lost people, or whatever. Clint couldn’t listen to Cap talk about loss and not think about the time he’d tried to console Clint over Phil, after he’d realized that Phil had been important to him. It had been such a mindfuck, honestly, because Clint hadn’t been able to help thinking, _Phil’s going to get such a kick out of this when I tell him._

Maybe he actually would, now.

Phil’s baby agent had left after just a few hours talking with Tony; apparently she was on some sort of recruitment mission and had stolen a couple hours to come to the Tower. Clint wasn’t really surprised; when Phil recruited agents he’d always had a type, and that type was brilliant and insubordinate. Phil might have looked conformist, with his suits and his subtle expressions and his quiet voice, but he’d always had a soft spot for iconoclasts and punks. It’s why he’d liked Tony despite himself; it’s why he’d taken so much pleasure in watching Fury stomp around intelligence conferences like a terrifying sci-fi pirate. Truth be told, it’s probably why he’d taken to Clint.

Anyway, Daisy left Tony Phil’s files so he could start work on the hand, and Tony’s put a copy of them on Clint’s secure server. He says it’s because Clint will need to help with the hand the way he helps with his arrow designs sometimes, since Tony’s usual biomechanics guy is… unavailable. Clint’s pretty sure Tony means it as some kind of obscure comfort; he only has two modes when it comes to people, “completely uninterested” and “creepily thorough stalker,” so his gestures of support aren’t the same as other people’s. 

Clint’s not sure whether it will make him feel better or worse to read Phil’s medical file, but it does actually help that Tony thought to give it to him—and, for that matter, that he came out to check on Clint in the first place after Clint went tearing out of the Tower like his ass was on fire. Clint has his issues, okay, see above regarding lots of therapy, and he’s well aware that his own childhood neglect led him to be unusually attention-seeking with people he trusts.

(Phil had always understood that about him, somehow, even though Clint’s therapist at SHIELD swore up and down that Phil didn’t get to read Clint’s session reports, so he couldn’t have found out that way. But Phil had always paid attention to Clint, had always seen him, had always left a chair for him, brought back an extra cup of coffee for him, scooted over and made room on the couch for him. He’d never snapped at Clint to _back off already_ or _get out of his bubble_ or _go get laid or something if he was so antsy_.)

Clint’s… not okay, right now. Finding out that Phil hadn’t been dead—or, fine, that he isn’t dead _anymore_ , whatever—and that he had apparently been planning to just go on about his business and never tell them? It’s stirred up a lot of shit, like turning over the sediment at the bottom of a pond; scraps of emotion are clouding his mind like mud and fish shit and seaweed. Clint’s so hurt, so furious at Phil; he feels like it’s burning him up, like he might hulk out himself in a minute. At the same time, though, he keeps getting flashes of joy and relief so intense they burn in his chest, that the world still has Phil Coulson in it, after all. 

He keeps thinking of stuff that he doesn’t know about Phil, now. It feels _wrong,_ not to know. Clint wonders whether there’s anyone in Phil’s new SHIELD that knows when to bring him donuts and when to bring him regular nuts (cashews or peanuts, but not almonds; honey-roasted most days but wasabi flavor during the fiscal year close-out cycle.) He wonders what it was about Daisy that made Phil bring her Little Debbie cakes. (Phil visited everyone in Medical, but snack cakes meant you were special, because Phil hadn’t waited to get you a present next time he was out, he’d dug into his own stash to bring them right away.) He wonders whether Daisy has a crush on Phil (seriously, the man is like catnip for a certain type of doe-eyed, willowy brunette, and even SHIELD agents aren’t immune) or whether it’s more a hero-worship/mentor kind of thing. 

Not that the two are mutually exclusive. Clint’s seen it happen.

All this, of course, is beside the point, which is that Clint’s totally going to read Phil’s file. He has to know. He’s not sure what, exactly, he’s hoping to find or learn, but he needs it; he always used to know everything about Phil, and now he knows nothing, for years he’s known _less_ than nothing, and he’s not sure he’s going to be able to sleep until he’s at least read through it. He and Nat both used to be on Phil’s medical information list, anyway, so it’s fine for Clint to know. He’s sure it’s fine. 

Plus, well, Clint’s not terribly worried right now about whether anything he does might piss Phil off.

Clint pulls up the file—on his StarkTab, not the holographic interface, because some things weren’t meant to be projected five feet in the air—and stares at the picture of Phil attached to the cover sheet. It’s actually the same picture that Phil always had on his jacket, his official SHIELD picture; there’s a thin pink line on his cheek, a slice from some broken glass that hadn’t quite finished healing when the photo was taken. Clint swallows hard and swipes past it, then can’t help the noise that punches out of him, because the next picture, at the top of a document labeled “Death and Recovery Report,” is of Phil _dead_.

Clint gags, choking down bile; he can’t look at this, he can’t, but he can’t drag his eyes away. He tries to tell himself that it’s after the alien juice, after Phil was brought back, but he knows it’s not true. Clint knows what bodies look like when they’ve been in cold storage, after all, and there is _frost_ and there’s a _bag unzipped_ and—“Friday,” he tries to say, then has to stop, cough his throat clear, then try again, actually audible. “Friday.”

“Yes, Agent Barton?”

“Can you take the pictures out of this, please?”

“Of course.” A second, a blink of an eye, and then the image winks away, replaced by a little cartoon of Iron Man (the default placeholder image across all the Tower’s systems.) “Please tap the icon if you would like to reveal any of the images.”

“Thanks,” Clint manages, and gives himself a minute to get his breath back before he starts reading. He’s not going to make it through, he thinks, unless he can get a little distance; he needs to read it like he’s Agent Barton reading a briefing file, not like he’s Clint reading about Phil. He pulls himself up—pulls _in_ , letting a lifetime of training take over—and starts to read.

He isn’t sure how long he sits there, but when he looks up again, he’s stiff and aching all over, his fingers and toes cold. The sun’s completely gone, his reading light the only illumination in the room, and his face reflects pale off the dark windows like a ghost.

He’s still in his professional headspace, distant and clear as waiting for a shot. He can feel the things he’s just read looming up behind him, but he can’t let them through, not yet. He pulls out the notebook he uses to sketch out arrow ideas and starts brainstorming field tech for a prosthetic hand.

Natasha arrives with the first chilly dawn light. He’s gone through about half the notebook and three pencils, and he’s surrounded with wood shavings and eraser dust and piles of paper, covered with rough sketches of lock picks that fold into a finger space, ammo clips that fit into a forearm. He looks up at her and her eyes are bright and red around the edges.

She knows. Clint’s fingers clench, and his pencil skids across a mockup of a micro-recorder. She reaches for him.

 _“Clint,”_ she says, and the glassy wall that Clint’s been hiding behind shatters as they crumple into each other’s arms. He thinks he cries, but he isn’t really sure. Maybe he’s been crying the whole time. He sucks in a sob of breath.

“Nat,” he says, “Nat, they took—they _cut_ —”

“I know,” she says, cuts him off, spares him from having to say it. “Tony gave me the file.”

“His _head,_ Nat.” He can’t breathe. He knows that SHIELD would do anything, he’s always known that, but even after everything that’s happened, he didn’t realize how far _anything_ went. “What—” he breaks off, and she strokes his hair, waiting until he’s able to finish his thought, to put words to the horrible possibility that’s been looming in his mind since he realized just how far TAHITI had gone into Phil’s brain. “Nat, what if that’s why he didn’t ever come back? What if they took us out of him?” 

Her hands clench, on the back of his neck and his shoulder, her nails digging in; she has him, she won’t let him go. “Then we put ourselves _back_ ,” she says, low and fierce, and he huddles into the soft hollow of her shoulder and lets himself come apart.

When he’s finally halfway coherent again, it’s full light and he feels hollow and unmoored; when he untangles himself from Natasha and stands, he almost falls on his ass. She catches him, of course, her arm like iron around him, implacable.

“When’s the last time you ate?” she asks, then shakes her head impatiently when he pauses, trying to remember. 

“Never mind,” she says. “Come with me and eat waffles.”

“Waffles don’t fix everything, Nat,” he manages. His voice is wrecked, but she’s heard worse.

“Come eat them anyway,” she says, and of course he obeys.

Tony shows up just as the first waffles are ready—Clint seriously thinks he has some kind of waffle alarm, because he _always knows_ —and Natasha gives him a little half-smile and pushes over a waffle, the little bowls of bananas and chocolate chips, and the whipped cream gun. They eat the first half-waffle or so in silence, and then Tony says, “So,” and then looks at them awkwardly. “Um, everything okay?”

Clint shoots him a disbelieving look, because _okay_ is about the last word he’d use to describe things right now. Natasha just shrugs, her face wry. “It’s something of a good news-bad news situation, isn’t it?” she says. “On the one hand, our dear friend has been miraculously returned from death; on the other, the miracle involved unspeakable tortures. To say nothing of the entire hand situation.” Clint can’t hold back a cringe, but tries to bury it in his cherry chocolate chip waffle. She brushes his hand lightly with hers.

“You guys gonna be okay with him being here?” Tony asks, mouth full of waffle. “Because I can do this hand thing somewhere else. Bros before…um, other bros.” He scrunches his face. “That didn’t come out right, but you know what I mean. I’m not going to make you uncomfortable in your own home.”

Clint still feels like shit, but he can’t help dragging up a smile for Tony at that; he hasn’t belonged enough places in his life to take it for granted. “Thanks,” he tells Tony. “It’s okay, though.” He stuffs his face with a giant bite so he doesn’t have to say anymore. He’s done enough emoting for a while. 

Fortunately, Natasha picks up the conversational thread. “It will be difficult, seeing him again,” she tells Tony.  “But in a good way, I think.” She pours a ladle of batter into the waffle iron, doing it perfectly without spilling any down the sides of the bowl or on the counter; as she closes the lid, the batter sizzles and smells of warm butter. “We’ve lost a lot, the last few years. It will be good to get something back.” She quirks an eyebrow at Clint, inquiring, and he nods. Despite everything else, she’s right about that.

“So when will you start?” she asks Tony.

He shrugs, looking down at his plate. “I’m already kicking around a few ideas,” he says. “Daisy gave me plenty to work with, I’ve even got complete 3-D scans of the…” he clears his throat. “Attachment point. But we’ll need to have him onsite to really finalize everything. Daisy seemed to think she could get him here, but…” he gestures in the air with his fork, sending a blob of whipped cream onto the counter. “I don’t know, she said he thinks it’s dangerous for us to be associated with him while SHIELD’s still technically on the lam, so it might be a bit of a sell. I’m thinking of asking Steve to call him up and give him Disappointed Face.”

“Hmm.” The waffle iron beeps, and Natasha deftly transfers its contents to Clint’s empty plate, then picks up the ladle again. “That’s not a bad idea, but I think we should all be there.”

“All the Avengers?”

“The original ones.” Her face pinches. “The ones currently available, anyway. The ones who were there. You and Steve, maybe Pepper and Rhodey, too, since they knew him. Me and Clint.”

Clint straightens, his stomach clenching. “Nat—”

“You don’t have to say anything,” she tells him. “Just be there. Let him see you. Let him see that you want him to come home.”

“Me and Cap’ll do the talking,” Tony adds. “But, yeah. We should let him see that it’s a consensus invitation.” He stabs the last quarter-waffle on his plate with his fork and carries it off, nibbling on the edges. “I’ll get in touch with Daisy, set something up,” he calls back over his shoulder. “Accept the invitation when it comes, for once, Barton, you leave everything tentative and scheduling you is a nightmare. FRIDAY, set up a videoconference, I need…” the door slides shut behind him, cutting off his voice.

“Nat,” Clint whispers. “I can’t, I—” 

She meets his eyes, unflinching but kind, and he knows she can see all the endings to that sentence. What if he looks at us like strangers? What if I lose it? What if he doesn't want to come home?

What if he says he’s already there?

“You _can_ ,” Natasha says, solid as stone. “All you have to do is stand there, I promise. You can do this, Clint.”

He lets out a long sigh, deflating. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

Tony and Daisy must work quickly, because the calendar invite comes through less than an hour later, scheduled for that weekend, the soonest that everyone could be back at the Tower. Steve apparently feels that it’s important for them all to be in the same physical room to make the call, and Clint can't say he disagrees. It’s a little easier to face the thought of seeing Phil again knowing he’ll have his team—not Delta, never that again, but still _his_ —at his back.  (Or his front. Honestly, he plans to hide behind Steve as much as he can.)

On Saturday, he skulks around in his rooms until time for the call; he wouldn’t say he’s avoiding the others, although honestly he totally is; Pepper still gets misty-eyed when someone mentions Phil, and if Steve tries to clap Clint on the shoulder and give him one of his painfully sincere expressions of support, Clint might either punch him or bust out ugly-crying. He’s not sure which one would be more embarrassing. 

He sidles into the big conference room with about a minute to spare. Of course, the downside to his avoidance plan is that most of the chairs are already full, and he ends up right in the front. Fuck. He crosses his arms over his chest, trying not to look as defensive as he feels, and stares at the conference table.

“OK, FRIDAY, let ‘er rip,” Tony says. There’s a brittleness in his tone that’s perversely reassuring. At least Clint isn’t the only person in this room having… difficulties. Let’s call them difficulties.

He kind of wishes that there was a period of adjustment and static, like there used to be with the SHIELD teleconference system, but Starktech wouldn’t dare have lag. There’s an electronic blip noise, and then a voice says, “Okay, Maria, what’s so…” and breaks off with a sharp inhale, and Clint’s eyes snap up to the screen because it’s Phil, it’s _Phil_ , and he’s staring into the camera with his face gone slack in the way it only ever does when the mission’s gone to shit and he’s desperately calculating options.

It hadn’t seemed truly real, before. Somewhere inside, Clint hadn’t believed it until now.

Phil’s eyes shift around the room. Clint can see what he’s seeing, in the little picture-in-picture videoconference window: Tony, flanked by Pepper and Rhodey; Steve, front and center, shoulders squared and mouth stern; Natasha, pale and still; Clint, whose face is blank, because his mind is running around and around the thought _it’s real, it’s true, he’s alive_.

Phil swallows hard, the crystal-clear Stark HD video transmitting every motion. He’s standing, obviously facing some kind of wall-mounted screen, far enough back that the camera picks him up from head to shin. He’s cut his hair, almost military-short, and his left arm is in a sling—which Clint is _not_ thinking about right now—but apart from that he looks…

He looks fucking _alive,_ is how he looks. Alive and _himself_ , and even as Clint thinks that, Phil pulls his agent-face on like he’s putting on a coat and gives the camera a mild little nod, that brass-balled _motherfucker_.

“Avengers,” he says. 

Natasha sighs, an exasperated little huff of air. “Really, Phil?” she asks, and he sags.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “You’re right, I—you didn’t deserve that from me.”

“Director Coulson,” Steve says, and starts into the spiel; he’s hitting the high points, Clint thinks, weaving a high quality all-American guilt trip worthy of the tiny grandmother Clint never had, but Clint isn’t really paying that much attention to what the people in the room are saying. He’s watching Phil. Nobody else but Nat would notice, but Clint can tell that Phil’s tired, and that he’s taking it hard. Clint’s torn between spiteful satisfaction—because he _should_ feel bad—and the urge to make Steve stop talking so Phil will stop looking like that.

Tony picks up the thread next—this is the part about the robot hand, Clint thinks—but Clint can tell that Phil isn’t giving Tony his full attention; he keeps looking over at the side of the table where Natasha and Clint are sitting. 

“We’re thinking six, eight weeks,” Tony says. “Ten at the most, and that includes the recovery from the microsurgery as well as occupational therapy afterward. We’ll do the attachment point first so you can start healing up while we’re finalizing the prosthesis.”

“I can’t be away that long,” Phil says. “My duty to SHIELD—”

Clint scoffs. “That what they’re calling it these days?” he mutters. Probably it was picked up with perfect fidelity, right down to the roughness in his tone from the lump in his throat that he can’t seem to swallow. Fucking Starktech. 

He wants to drop his eyes, but he can’t, he can’t look away; he’s like one of those snakes that get hypnotized by birds or whatever. His face is doing something, maybe, because Nat lays a hand on his knee under the table. On screen, Phil’s right hand twitches, as though unconsciously, in a pattern that’s seared into Clint’s brain; one of their old hand signals from Delta. _Status?_

Before he can stop himself, Clint’s responding, the years of training and trust worn into grooves too deep to be overridden by a little thing like death and resurrection. _Position overrun_. Or, as he’d always called it, “deep in the shit.”

Phil’s hand clenches at his side. “On second thought,” he says, “I’m sure you can provide adequate telework facilities.”

Tony stumbles to a halt halfway into his “the Deathlok tech might turn your hand into a murder hand” bullet point. “I—what? I mean yes. Of course, what do you take me for?”

“A pain in my ass,” Phil says, then sighs, his face looking suddenly older, worn thin. “And also a friend, but I’ll deny I said it if anyone asks.”

While Tony’s still gaping like a fish and Steve is beaming at the room, Phil looks straight at Clint and Nat.

“I can be there in two weeks,” he says. “Will that work?”

Tony answers him, but Phil doesn’t relax until he sees Natasha nod. 

They finish the call and turn off the video, but Clint can’t join in the chatter that immediately fills the room. His hands are cold and there’s a lump in his belly; he wants them to turn it on again and bring Phil back, to keep Phil on the screen, talking and moving. At the same time, he’s starting to panic. Phil’s coming here in two weeks.

“I got a thing,” he blurts, and he goes straight out of the room and out of the Tower and just starts walking, and he walks until his legs feel like lead and he isn’t entirely sure where he is.

He texts Nat. _ok im done for now._

She pulls up to the curb within five minutes.

“I know Stark has us all lojacked,” he remarks, climbing into the car, “but don’t you think this is a little over the top?”

“I don’t want to misplace you before we get Coulson properly back,” she says, voice tart. “Stay in the Tower to mope next time.”

“I wasn’t moping,” he says, but it’s apologetic. He hopes that Nat knows he’d never leave her, but after Bruce, he can understand her being a little twitchy about people who panic and flee into the night.

It’s dark in the car, but her silence has the quality of an eye-roll.

Clint would like to say that he spends the next two weeks productively working through his issues, but actually what happens is that he alternates between target practice, flooding Tony with ideas for spy gadgets suitable for hiding inside a robot hand, and manufacturing various errands around town to keep himself busy so he can pretend he isn't freaking the hell out. He toys with the idea of just decamping back to Bed-Stuy for the duration of Phil's stay in the Tower, but he thinks that Nat might actually maim him if he tries it, and besides, after Clint's fuck-up with the hand signal, he wouldn't put it past Phil to turn up there if Clint isn't around when he arrives. Phil always took his backup duties seriously ( _until he didn't_ , a mean little voice whispers in Clint's mind, _until he just let everything go to hell so he could stay dead and gallivant around on a jet_ , and when the hell did Clint's negative self-talk start using words like "gallivant"?)

Clint is maybe possibly a little bit fucked up about Phil Coulson. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has read and commented! I'm so happy to see that you're enjoying the story. The next chapter, "Passive-Aggressive Donuts," will be posted on or before Sunday, February 21. (Those of you looking forward to Option C, this is the chapter for you!)


	3. Passive-Aggressive Donuts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are passive-aggressive donuts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to Kathar and Faeleverte for excellent beta! Seriously, this story gets so much better when I take your advice! *smooches*

Over the next two weeks, Clint winds himself up so much that when the day finally arrives for Phil to finally arrive, he's actually a little relieved. He’s always done better dealing with actual shit that happens than with the potential shit that he can dream up. At least now he can get the whole thing over with and stop running doomsday scenarios in his head. (What if Phil blames Clint for everything that happened? What if Phil thought Clint and/or Nat were Hydra? What if he’d been looking for an out all along and was glad not to be bothered with them anymore?)

When FRIDAY announces that Director Coulson’s Quinjet will be landing in twenty minutes (Quinjet? how did he get _that_ away from the Army?), Clint goes down to the common room right off the helipad so that he can find the best vantage point for reconnaissance. Fortunately, Tony still loves glass, so there are plenty of reflective and/or transparent surfaces available for him to take advantage of. He sets himself up in the far corner of the room, where a combination of furniture and structural supports provide shadows, but allow coverage of ninety percent of the room through either direct line of sight or one of Tony's tacky mirrored projection surfaces. He knows it’s probably (definitely) a chickenshit thing to do, but he’s been stewing for two weeks; he can’t bear to not be there to see Phil arrive, but neither could he manage to greet him with a handshake and a smile like’s he’s just been on an undercover or something. So, covert surveillance it is.

Tony walks in just as the Quinjet is landing. He’s talking a mile a minute to Natasha about microcircuits and shifting his weight from the balls of his feet to the heels and back again, like he’s unconsciously trying to engage repulsors on his shoes. The three of them are the only ones onsite, though Steve has mentioned the possibility of bringing everyone back from upstate for the weekend for some kind of godawful family dinner ordeal. Nat’s promised to try to talk him out of it.

"Is Barton not coming?" Tony asks. "Should I be worried?"

Natasha looks straight at Clint, her expression clearly conveying that she is unimpressed with his shenanigans. "He'll be fine," she says. "Probably had to go do something for that rattletrap building of his."

Tony, distracted, starts into one of his favorite rants (if he would just let me invest, Barton could have the first clean-energy condominium conversion in Brooklyn!) and Clint gives Natasha a nod: _thanks_. She raises an eyebrow: _I’m going along with this for now, but you need to work your shit out._

Then the Quinjet lands, and the hatch opens, and Phil stalks out onto the helipad. He's wearing a suit with no tie and aviator shades and the sling, and is pulling a wheeled case behind him with his other hand. Somehow, he still manages to look like a boss. Clint wonders if he brought anyone else with him—any of the agents he's got stashed away that were apparently more worthy of knowing he was alive than Clint was, not that Clint's bitter or anything—but nobody else gets off, and as soon as Phil makes it to the door the hatch closes and the 'jet takes off again. 

FRIDAY opens the door for Phil, and he steps inside, dropping the handle of his bag to take off his aviators, eyes settling immediately on Tony and Nat. 

"Agent," Tony says.

"Mr. Stark," Phil says back, professional smooth-bastard tone turned up to 11. "Thank you for your hospitality."

Natasha mutters something uncomplimentary in Russian, and Phil's face crumples into a soft, tentative smile.

"Tasha," he says, and there's history and apology and happiness all layered in his voice. 

Nat crosses to him in two long steps, tucks herself in under his good arm, carefully avoiding the sling, and rests her bright head on his shoulder. "Phil," she says, into his coat but still clearly audible, "I am very angry with you. But," her voice actually trembles, "I'm so happy you're alive that I'm going to forgive you for not trusting us."

He tightens his arm around her, and rests his face against her hair for a moment before looking up, right into Clint's hiding pla—er, reconnaissance position. Clint freezes.

"It was never that I didn't trust you," Phil says, voice clearly pitched to carry. "Never. Myself, the situation, even SHIELD sometimes, but never you."

"I'm sure you'll find this statement amusing," Natasha says, a wry twist to her lips, "but you don't have to do everything yourself."

"What a refreshing and novel perspective," Phil says, mild as milk and dry as dust and so familiar it makes Clint ache. 

"We could have helped you. We would have, gladly."

"But at what cost?” He glances between Tony and Nat before looking back at Clint, though Clint knows Phil shouldn’t be able to see him from where he’s standing. “You had your own battles to fight, and after HYDRA, being connected with SHIELD would only have hurt you.” He tries to smile, but it looks more like a wince. “I saw your Congressional testimony. You can’t tell me that would have gone better if they’d known you were still working with us.”

“Because I’m so widely known for being completely forthcoming,” Nat says. “Try again.”

His shoulders rise and fall in what Clint recognizes as a sigh. “I know Skye—Daisy shared the TAHITI files with you,” he says. “It was…bad. I’d been dead to you for months by the time I was in a position to communicate at all, and everyone from my doctors to Fury was telling me it was vital that I maintain the secret, even from you. I had hoped it was just temporary, but then once I learned about TAHITI…” his jaw clenches, and he looks down, staring at his feet or maybe into the distance. “I was compromised,” he says. “Dangerous. I was showing all the signs that the others had, the obsessions… May was on standby to take me out the minute I lost control. If we hadn’t found the cure…”

“But you did,” Nat reminds him.

“And by then, it had been years,” Phil says, voice gone thin. “I didn’t see how it could possibly do anything but hurt you, and for what? Just to assuage my conscience? It seemed better to let sleeping dogs lie.”

“If it were one of us, you would want to know,” Nat says, stepping back a little to look him in the eye. 

Phil’s hand clenches a little on her shoulder before he lets it slide away. “Yes,” he says, and it’s an admission, a concession. He sounds so tired. It isn’t right, for Phil to sound that way. “I would want to know.”

Nat nods, then tilts her head towards Phil, meeting Clint’s eyes in the reflection off some kind of lamp thing. _You going to say anything?_

He should, he knows. There’s no reason he couldn’t be out there with Nat right now, except for how the thought makes his gut churn, brings clammy sweat to his hands even though he knows the Tower is 72 degrees year-round. It’s Phil—Phil, _alive again;_ the thought of listening to him tell Clint all the logical reasons that he stayed away shouldn’t fill Clint with dread, but it does. It does. He tightens his mouth, shrinking further back into his corner.

Natasha rolls her eyes. “We’ll talk more later,” she says, and grabs Phil’s suitcase. “I’ll just put this in your room while you and Tony figure out your schedule.”

In the wake of her departure, Phil and Tony look at each other for a long moment.

"Is this awkward?" Tony asks. "Because I am detecting a distinct feeling of awkward. Should we hug?"

"No," Phil says, the corner of his mouth tucked down in the way that means he's trying not to smile. "Certainly not."

Tony nods, then claps Phil on his good shoulder. “All right, good talk,” he says. “Come on down to the workshop, I need to take a look at your arm. We’re hoping we can schedule the surgery for next week so you have time to heal up while we’re refining the designs for the prosthesis. Barton’s got some ideas.” 

Phil looks straight at Clint again. “I’m sure they’re good ones,” he says. 

“He had a thing today,” Tony tells Phil. (Seriously: bros.) “He’ll be around later, though. He’s had a lot to say about field requirements.”

“I look forward to seeing what you’ve come up with,” Phil says. He’s being genuine, Clint can tell, but there’s a little flicker of something in his body language that makes Clint itch. Maybe it’s the way he keeps shooting little looks at Clint’s corner, like he wants to say something but is holding back. “I’m sure Clint will come by when he’s ready. I know this must be difficult.”

“It’s shit-tastic,” Tony says, unusually sincere. “The whole situation’s a mess. But we really are glad to have you back, Phil.”

It’s the first time that Clint knows of that Tony’s ever called him that to his face, and Phil doesn’t bother restraining his small but genuine smile.

“I appreciate that.” His shirt collar is open and Clint can see his neck, and it’s messing with his head a little. Phil’s neck isn’t supposed to be just naked like that, not unless someone has needed a tourniquet or to be tied up or something that required a sacrificial tie. It’s just wrong.

Tony leads Phil off, talking about microsurgery, and Clint lets himself sink down to the floor and bury his face in his knees for a minute. He’s a fucking mess. He’s not sure how he’s going to get through the next couple of months. Being in the same room as Phil freaks him out, but now that Phil’s gone, Clint’s already getting the same twitchy feeling he associates with someone going off-comms during a mission: a creeping sense that someone he needs to keep safe isn’t where they’re supposed to be. He’s going to be a basket case in a week if this keeps up. What’s he supposed to do, if talking to Phil and _not_ talking to Phil are equally impossible? Eventually, he makes himself get up. He’s not going to be able to sort out his head anytime soon, apparently, so he might as well do something productive with his time. 

He ends up taking some prototype arrowheads to one of the labs to tinker with the payload. It is purely coincidence (he would claim, if anyone asked) that the lab he picks is right above Tony’s main workshop and has a glass floor. (Tony either doesn’t consider that people might wear dresses in the lab or he considers it too much. Clint doesn’t want to know which, because if Tony and Pepper have some kind of upskirt panty-peeping role-play going on, Clint does _not_ need to know about it.) 

Tony’s got their preliminary sketches up on the holographic display and is walking Phil through them, and watching them out of the corner of his eye calms Clint down enough to pretend like everything is normal. 

Phil and Tony spend a lot of time in the workshop over the next several days. Fortunately, Clint has a lot of arrowheads, and when he runs out of arrowheads, he has a lot of ideas for Phil’s hand that FRIDAY is helping him put into the CAD-on-steroids program Tony uses. 

He gets FRIDAY to play the lab audio through one of his hearing aids, just in case something that Tony and Phil talk about sparks an idea or requires some alterations to the designs. He mostly tunes it out while he works, but every so often something grabs his attention.

“Let’s talk about the phantom pain,” Tony says, and Clint almost knocks his fletching jig off the table. He stops moving, all his focus on their voices in his ear. 

“You have the report,” Phil says, and his voice is heavy, tired.

“Yes, but it’s been a few weeks since then,” Tony says. “Is it getting better? Worse? Are your triggers still the same?”

“The baseline pain levels have improved,” Phil says. “It’s become a lot more tolerable as the injury continued to heal. So far, quick temperature shifts and physical impact to the site are the most consistent triggers.”

Tony nods, flicking through files. “Stress? Sex?”

“My stress levels have been pretty consistent, so it’s hard to separate that out as a stimulus,” Phil says, his tone dry. “As for the other…” he shrugs. “It’s not exactly been a priority, but we did some nerve-stimulation tests and it looks like I may escape that particular ordeal.”

“Happy to hear it.” Tony brings up a new file. “So, we have two options when we do the surgery. We can use the cradle to heal off all the nerve endings in a way that we think should eliminate the phantom sensations entirely, but that will prevent us from integrating your nerves completely into the port. You’ll still have control, but you’ll have to work a lot harder for it, and sensation and fine-motor will suffer. On the plus side, you’ll be completely healed in a month or two.”

Clint doesn’t have to see Phil’s face to know that he doesn’t look too excited about option one.

“What’s the second option?” Phil asks.

“Full neuromuscular integration,” Tony says. “We’ll leave the nerves partially healed. The pain should still improve, but it might be a year or two before you stop having episodes. If you do heavy OT work while you’re healing, you should eventually have almost full sensation and control of the prosthetic. As we fine-tune, you may actually get better precision with the robotic hand than with your other one; it’s within the tolerances.”

“Either way, I’ll be better off than I am now,” Phil says. “Send me the full crosswalk, if you would, and I’ll let you know my decision.”

Tony nods. Clint notices him rubbing absently at his breastbone, and wonders whether it’s the talk of surgery or of pain that’s making him reach for the arc reactor that isn’t there anymore. He’s glad when the conversation moves on to the pros and cons of titanium versus carbon fiber. He knows that phantom pain is a thing amputees have to deal with, but he somehow hadn’t put that together with Phil’s hand, maybe because Phil seemed so unbothered by the whole thing.

Stupid. Phil’s like the Black Knight from Monty Python when he’s hurt; he’d try to seem unbothered by anything. 

He remembers the security footage from the helicarrier, Phil getting off one last zinger with his heart’s blood staining his teeth. The memory is disturbing for a whole other set of reasons, now, the grief overlaid by bitterness and hurt. Clint pushes the thought away. He needs to close his eyes and just breathe for a minute before he’s able to concentrate on work again.

Clint’s deep in his designs and mulling over whether a laser finger or a microfilament cutter would be more useful in an infiltration model when he gets the oogy feeling that means someone’s watching him. He looks up, then around, then down, through the floor, to where Phil is looking up at him steadily while Tony is fussing over some kind of cast he’s taking of Phil’s arm. Phil is wearing a t-shirt, because apparently walking around half-dressed is a thing Phil does now? Does resurrection make you lose all sense of decorum? They make eye contact for a long moment before Tony, following Phil’s gaze, rolls his eyes and says something that Clint can’t make out because his face is in profile and also Clint’s looking at him through a bulletproof glass floor.

“Mr. Stark would like to invite you to work with them in the main lab,” FRIDAY says a minute later.

Clint looks down again. Tony makes an extravagant come-here gesture. Phil, beside him and half-encased in the casting mold, looks hopeful, and that pisses Clint off, because it’s not like Phil couldn’t have had the pleasure of Clint’s company at any given time in the last three years or anything.

“Tell Tony I have another appointment,” Clint says, and shoves his notes into his drawer and takes off. He needs to shoot for a while.

“So,” Nat says later, coming up behind Clint on the range because apparently range safety is for other people. 

Clint relaxes his draw. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That much is obvious to everyone in the Tower,” she says. She pulls a package of powdered-sugar donuts out of the kangaroo pocket of her hoodie and holds it out to Clint. “Tony had to keep Phil through lunch while the casting medium dries,” she says. “He needs a snack.”

“I’m pretty sure Tony has staff to deliver the snacks,” Clint says. 

“He asks about you every time we speak,” Nat continues. “It’s beginning to feel a little insulting, the way he’s always checking to see if you’re behind me.” 

“He had plenty of chances to talk to me,” Clint says. He wonders what Phil wants to know, now that it can’t possibly matter anymore. Maybe he just wants a chance to make his little speech about being compromised, talk Clint around out of being mad at him. Maybe he’s hoping he and Nat will do something for SHIELD. 

“Your disinterested act would be a lot more convincing if you didn’t lurk ten meters away from him at all times,” Nat says, impatient. “Bring the man some donuts and the two of you can stare at each other in the same room for once.”

“It’s twenty meters,” Clint says, sullen.

Nat waggles the donut packet in his face. “It’s this or Steve gets involved.”

“Ugh, fine.”  Clint takes the donuts so she’ll leave. He really doesn’t have any intention of taking them anywhere, but dammit, she’s right that Phil forgets to eat when he gets busy with something. God knows Tony won’t be any help; he lives on kale shakes and inspiration half the time.

He goes to the kitchen and puts the donuts on a plate. Then he goes into Thor’s snack cabinet and gets some of the chocolate ones too. He arranges them in a pattern, because why the hell not, at this point?

He gets a box of milk with a little straw attached (Steve is weird, okay) and shoves it in his pocket, because the powdered sugar ones make Phil thirsty and he’ll need a drink.

Halfway to the lab, he gets pissed off at the whole situation, because fuck Phil, anyway. Phil doesn’t deserve to have donuts, he’s the one in the wrong here.

Clint takes a bite out of each donut and puts it back on the plate, then stomps into Tony’s lab. He slams the plate down on the table next to where Phil is sitting with his bad arm immobilized in casting goo, slams the milk down next to it, then stomps over to the corner, where he crosses his arms and glares at Phil. 

Phil looks down at the plate, then up at Clint.

“Thank you, Clint,” he says, and he obviously fucking means it, which lets all the air out of Clint’s anger. It’s just typical, really. He won’t even let a guy be mad at him one time without being all Phil-like about it. This whole thing would be easier if he were more of a dick.

Phil reaches around awkwardly with his good hand, grabs the top donut (sugar), and eats it, taking his first bite right where Clint’s teethmarks are. When he’s finished, he grabs the milk, then looks down at it with a little frown. He clamps it between his knees; what is he—oh. Oh, fuck. He can’t get the straw off with just the one hand. 

Nice one, Barton, taunt the amputee. Shit, Clint is a jackass.

He goes over and takes the milk back, pokes the straw into it, then shoves it back into Phil’s hand with a little too much force. Phil gives him happy eyebrows, and that pisses Clint off some more. Clint knows when Phil’s eyebrows are happy and when they’re pissed off and when they mean “this informant sold us out, get ready to run” but that apparently didn’t mean he was important enough for Phil to get in touch and show him which eyebrows mean “hey, I was traumatically resurrected with mad science.”

Then he feels bad again, because who is Clint to dictate how Phil should deal with his traumatic resurrection?

He grabs another of Phil’s donuts and goes to lean against the wall just outside the lab door, out of sight but not out of earshot, if he turns the volume up on his aids. Which he does. There’s powdered sugar all down the front of his shirt.

“I have no idea what I just witnessed,” Tony complains.

“He’s still mad, but he wants me to know he cares,” Phil says softly, just at the edge of what Clint can hear. Fuck him anyway: how did he know that before Clint did?

“I tend to prefer my expressions of caring a little more sanitary,” Tony says. “Say, and I know this is ironic coming from me, possibly in the form of talking. Pepper’s a big fan of talking.”

“We’ll talk,” Phil says.

“When he’s ready, I know, you’ve said,” Tony cuts him off. “What if he never gets ready, you just let him lick all your food before you eat it? Piss on your leg to mark his territory?”

“No good ever came of pushing him,” Phil says, and it’s his stubborn tone; Clint recognizes it from a hundred ops. “And I’m not standing on the moral high ground, here. As far as I’m concerned, he can do what he needs to do.”

“How the hell did _I_ become the well-adjusted one in this situation?” Tony says. Clint doesn’t stay to hear the answer, but goes upstairs to work on the quick-release attachment for getting out of handcuffs. You get handcuffed a lot in Phil’s line of work.

(Of course Clint cares. Clint always cared. Phil’s the one who changed everything.)

 

By the time they’re ready to start the prep for Phil’s surgery, Clint has gotten into the habit of bringing Phil snacks now and then. He usually doesn’t even take bites out anymore. It’s not like that had done any good, anyway; Phil would just eat the stuff all the same, usually while holding eye contact with Clint or at least looking steadily at wherever wall or ceiling or blind corner Clint is using as cover in his surveillance.

Clint is starting to feel kind of weird about the whole thing—

(“ _Starting_ to?”

“Shut up, Nat.”)

—and Phil always thanks him so sincerely it kind of takes the satisfaction out of it and just makes Clint feel like a dick. 

Like _more_ of a dick. At least 78% dicklike. His baseline varies day to day, but until Phil came he would say he averaged 40% at most. It’s no wonder people have started giving him the side-eye if he’s doubled his standard dickitude.

He’s not even sure himself why he keeps it up. It’s not like any guest in the Tower goes unfed, and Phil is obviously a grown man who has been feeding himself for some time. But there’s a part of Clint that needs it, needs Phil to see him and acknowledge his pain, even if that acknowledgement comes through eating the less-creamy halves of a pile of dissected Oreos. 

The morning Phil is supposed to have his first consult with Dr. Cho (it’s on the shared calendar, okay, it’s not like Clint’s hacking Phil’s schedule or anything), Clint goes by Phil’s guest suite with some French toast sticks and bacon, because he’d made too much, and since it was finger food, he thought he’d share. He’d planned to set it down outside the door, ring the bell, and leave, but as he approaches, FRIDAY slides the door open.

“Um,” Clint says, “this isn’t a public space, FRIDAY.”

“Director Coulson added you to his access list,” she tells him.

“Natasha?” Phil calls from inside. “Come on in.”

For a panicked moment, Clint considers trying to sound like Nat, then considers dropping the food and taking off. Only the conviction that Phil won’t let a mysterious visitor go uninvestigated stops him.

_Sack up, Barton._

He grabs the plate tighter and goes in, following Phil’s voice to the bedroom. He stops in the doorway, arrested by the sight of Phil, wearing suit pants, with one of his crisp white shirts open over his t-shirt. It looks so familiar, so right; a thousand mornings in a thousand safehouses, watching Phil put on his Agent suit, ready to take on the world with Clint and Nat beside him. It was a sight he’d thought gone from the world forever, and Clint’s eyes burn.

Phil turns, then, and the image wavers and dissolves; one starched cuff is dangling empty and he’s trying to use his abbreviated forearm to hold the shirt in place so he can do up the buttons with his other hand—or, not even his _other_ hand, now, Clint supposes. Just his hand.

“Clint,” Phil says, like he isn’t even surprised, and then he smiles, though his eyes look tense. “Good morning. It’s good to see you.”

Clint sets the plate down on Phil’s dresser with a clatter. “I made too much bacon,” he says, defiantly. They’re the first words he’s spoken to Phil since before Loki, if you don’t count drunken conversations Clint may have had with Phil’s grave. (Clint doesn’t, because Phil wasn’t actually ever there.)

The tension in Phil’s face relaxes. “I appreciate you bringing it by.” He waves his hand. “I’ll just be a minute, okay?”

Clint leans against the doorway, crossing his arms over his chest to keep from… he doesn’t know. Eating Phil’s bacon, maybe. Something. He watches as Phil resumes his buttoning process: he pinches the button in his fingers, holds the placket with what remains of his other arm, then tries to sort of push the button through. Clint can see how it will probably work eventually, but right now Phil’s having trouble, the button slipping out of his grasp or the buttonhole getting misaligned. Clint twitches all over. It’s just… it’s _wrong_ , is the thing. It looks wrong.

Phil looks over, forehead creased. “Sorry,” he says, and he isn’t meeting Clint’s eyes, and that’s even more wrong, because Phil has never looked away from Clint like he’s ashamed, never, and no stupid fucking _buttons_ on a stupid fucking _shirt_ should have the power to make him. 

“I probably need some more OT,” Phil says. He gestures a little, and the latest button slips out of its hole; Phil’s shoulders sag a bit, and before Clint can process what he’s about to do he has crossed the room and is smoothing the fronts of Phil’s shirt down over his chest, making sure they’re lined up. 

“Your bacon will get cold,” he tells Phil’s collarbone, and does up his buttons, quick and neat, starting at the bottom and working his way up. The fabric is warm beneath his fingers, and when he gets to the top his fingers brush Phil’s throat as he fastens the collar. He can feel it beneath his hands, flexing a little with Phil’s breath and his pulse.

Because Phil’s alive now. He’s alive. Clint gulps a breath, and it smells like cologne, which was always Phil at HQ and never Phil on mission, unless it was an undercover mission, and that was a different cologne. Clint’s hands twitch, and he covers it by pulling away.

“Tuck your shirt in,” he tells Phil’s neck. He can see the pulse beating, tiny flickers under thin skin. “I’ll grab your tie.”

Phil’s tie is where Clint knew it would be, draped over the foot of the bed. He wonders how Phil had been planning to wear it, with as much trouble as the shirt had been giving him. Had Natasha been helping Phil with stuff this whole time? The thought doesn’t sit well with him.

He picks the tie up and then almost drops it again, because he recognizes it; it’s the tie Phil always used to wear for meetings that he really needed to go his way. Clint and Nat used to tease him about it, his good luck tie, and Phil would roll his eyes but never quite deny it.

He wasn’t wearing it, on the Helicarrier the day Loki came. 

Clint swallows hard and turns back to Phil, who has gotten his shirt tucked in and is just doing up his belt. Clint steps in, flipping Phil’s collar up and draping the tie around Phil’s neck, and then moves behind him; he’s never been able to tie a tie backwards. When he reaches around Phil to tie the knot— _a half-Windsor, Barton, we’re not going to a wedding_ —he has to move closer, until he’s pressed against Phil’s back. He makes himself take his time with the tie, getting the knot just so. He doesn’t usually do it for himself, but he knows how.

Phil’s shoulders tense as Clint starts to move, then relax, his back curving just barely into Clint’s chest, his breathing smooth and easy. Clint focuses on the knot, settling it neatly at the base of Phil’s throat and smoothing the silk down his chest. He has a sudden memory, then, of the description in the medical file, the stab wound through Phil’s heart. He remembers the spear in Loki’s hands; it would have come through right where Clint is touching. Everything is blurred for a minute, two contradictory things true at once: Phil is warm and breathing, Phil is torn and bleeding. Phil is alive, Phil is dead. 

Clint has flinched away and is halfway out the door before he registers moving.

“Eat your bacon,” he says, voice hoarse, and flees to the range to settle his nerves.

 

 

Daisy Johnson comes back before Phil’s surgery. Which is fine; Clint’s self-aware enough that he knows his issues with Daisy are really his issues with Phil. He thinks he’d have liked Daisy if they’d met some other way; she has gumption, and is obviously willing to do a little Phil-managing when needed. It’s just that the job of Phil-managing wasn’t supposed to be hers.

She comes off the elevator looking like a perfect agent, polished and professional, and shakes hands with Dr. Cho in a way that definitely reflects the training she’s apparently done with Melinda. Then Phil comes around the corner, and her face breaks into a radiant grin.

“Coulson!” she squeals, and she runs up to him; Clint’s already moving to intercept her before he registers that she’s _hugging Agent Coulson_ , arms flung around him and wrinkling him and knocking him back a step with her exuberance, and Phil is awkward and a little stiff, but he’s smiling at her and he’s _hugging her back_.

Clint does not _flounce off in a huff_ , no matter what Natasha says. It’s just, he knows when he’s not wanted. 

He re-does his threat assessment on Daisy Johnson, though. She’s making Phil not act like himself.

“You know,” Natasha says, paging through his updated dossier, “It’s not that out of character. He’s really been much more tactile since he was resurrected.”

He shoots her a dirty look.

“I’m just saying, if you want a hug, give the man a hug. He’s been trying to respect your boundaries, such as they are.”

“I don’t want a hug,” he tells her. He wants to change the past so that Phil never died and never left and Clint never had to know how it felt to lose him. He wants to have lived in some kind of mirror universe like on _Star Trek_ only instead of everyone having goatees and being evil, Delta got attached to the Avengers wholesale and Phil moved into the Tower with them and helped Cap run missions. He wants to have been important enough to Phil that staying dead to him was never an option. Clint wants a lot of things, but a hug is pretty low on the list.

“Mmmm.” Nat points to one line of the dossier. “I think you need to upgrade the hacking threat level. She’s been keeping up with Tony on the technobabble.”

 

Clint plans to avoid Phil until Daisy leaves, since after all Phil hardly needs Clint to bring him snacks while his shiny new protege is hanging around shoving Little Debbies in his face. The plan goes well for approximately eight hours, and then Clint realizes that Daisy isn’t going to leave until after Phil’s surgery.

They had a deal, is the thing. The three of them. Nobody had to be sedated alone. Clint’s not about to break a promise, even the kind that never got said with words. He tries not to think about how many times Phil’s been sedated alone since New York. If Phil had wanted that to be Clint’s problem, well, _Clint_ wasn’t the one who’d gone dark.

The morning of Phil’s operation (and why is surgery always in the morning? If it were Clint, he’d want to sleep in before cutting into someone, but maybe that’s why Clint isn’t a doctor) Clint goes to the lab-slash-operating-suite and scrubs up and gowns up, then stalks into the little curtained-off corner where Phil is. Phil’s in a hospital gown, with one of those bouffy shower cap things on his head and an IV in the good arm. His eyes are a little hazy—he’s already got the sedative on board, then—but he’s propped up, almost sitting on his gurney. Nat’s standing at his feet, one hand resting lightly on the blanket-covered lump of his shin, watching the exits. 

Phil looks up when Clint comes over, and he must be drugged pretty heavily already, because he’s got no guard on his face at all. His mouth drops open and his face just… lights up, is honestly the only way Clint can think to describe it.

“You came,” Phil says, soft and surprised and happy, and Clint feels like a total bag of shit. 

“Course I did,” he mutters.

“I told you,” Natasha tells Phil, shooting Clint a what-did-I-tell-you sort of look. Clint pretends not to notice. He moves to Phil’s side, carefully picks up Phil’s hand, and wraps his fingers around it, avoiding all the tubes and leads. Phil smiles at him fuzzily and slumps a little heavier back into his pillows. Clint gives a quick, interrogatory squeeze—status? and Phil gives two longer squeezes back: all-clear.

They make Clint leave the OR after they put Phil all the way out. He guards half the entry points and Nat takes the other half. About an hour into the surgery, Daisy comes and leans against the wall next to where Clint is standing. She’s careful not to get in his sightline to the door, and she’s just outside of arm’s reach. Melinda’s done a good job with this one.

“Do you really think something’s going to happen?” she asks, forehead creased with concern. “In the middle of Avengers Tower?”

“Not my job to think,” Clint tells her. “Just to be ready.”

She nods, biting her lip, then shoots him an anxious look under her eyelashes. “Can I help?” 

He wants to say no, she hasn’t earned it. No, it’s not her place. Isn’t it enough that she’s had Phil with her for all this time while Clint had to do without?

She loves Phil, though. He can see it in her big eyes, when she forgets to look like an agent and looks like a scared kid who just realized her dad isn’t invincible.

“Go online,” he tells her. FRIDAY’s got it, but an extra set of eyes can’t hurt. “Watch for chatter, or signs of a hack. Especially anything targeting the power.”

“Got it,” she says, and pulls a battered laptop out of her messenger bag. It has glitter stickers on it, and Clint feels an entirely involuntary pang of sympathy, because Christ, she really is just a kid, even more than the usual baby-faced junior agents.

She watches the net all morning, and when Pepper has someone bring them coffee, Daisy splits a pack of Swiss Cake Rolls with Clint, still keeping one eye on the screen.

“I was living in my van,” she blurts, picking the chocolate coating off with nervy fingers.

“Hmm?” Clint knows, of course, about the van and the hacking and the unorthodox recruitment (the “Coulson Special,” they used to call it), but he wants to hear what she’s going to say.

“When Coulson found me,” she explains. She types something in a rapid burst, scrutinizes the results, then nods to herself. “I thought I was about to be disappeared. But he took me home—to the Bus, to SHIELD. He let me prove myself. He stood up for me.”

Clint concentrates on taking a bite of his cake without letting the filling ooze out. “Yeah,” he says. “He does that.”

She gives him a look, like they understand each other. Maybe they do, a little bit. 

It’s a long-ass surgery, because apparently they’re redefining biomechanics in there, blah blah nanotech blah blah adamantium blah blah Extremis (a _variant!_ not the exploding kind! it’s like you have no faith in me, Barton). When Tony started quoting the opening credits of _Star Trek_ , Clint had tuned him out a little, but the gist was that the surgery is really complicated, but that’s because it’s really awesome. Whatever, Tony might be reckless with himself but he’s super careful with the team, and Clint knows that he used the Extremis variant on Pepper that time, so that’s fine. 

Clint’s a sniper, anyway. He’s good at waiting. 

Finally, Dr. Cho comes out, looking tired but satisfied. “We’re done,” she says. “No crowds, we need room to work, but one of you can go sit with him while he’s waking up. His arm’s still in the cradle, we don’t need him getting agitated.”

“Agent Barton should go,” Daisy says, immediately. “This morning, he—I mean, Coulson’ll want to see him. When he wakes up.”

Clint feels like maybe he should tell someone else to go instead, like Phil’s the last cookie on the plate and he doesn't want to be greedy. But he doesn’t, just nods at Daisy and peels away from the wall, shaking out joints that are tight from the long watch.

He thinks maybe he’ll let her call him Clint now. 

Dr. Cho leads him back to the recovery room—well, recovery area-of-the-lab—where Phil is propped up behind one of Tony’s sound-baffling fields, his left arm encased to the elbow in the machine that is knitting together microcircuitry and synthetic flesh to make the socket for Phil’s new hand. Clint’s glad that he didn’t have to be in a full-body cradle like the one that had produced Vision; those things look too much like coffins for Clint’s peace of mind. As it is, his mind keeps trying to bring up that picture from the death and recovery report, and he has to keep shoving away the image of Phil stiff and blue with frost on his lips.

There’s a stool on Phil’s right, in a little space out of the way of the monitoring equipment and IV stand and other medical detritus, and Clint perches on it and takes Phil’s hand again.

“His vitals are getting closer to baseline,” Janelle tells him. She is, if he remembers right, a world-class trauma nurse who Tony convinced to take a leave of absence from Johns Hopkins and sign her life away in NDAs by paying her three years’ salary for three months of work. “He’ll be able to hear you soon, so try to reassure him; we don’t want him to start struggling.”

Clint nods at her, and starts talking to Phil. He keeps his tone even and calm, a little boring; reporting out on a mission where nothing noteworthy happened. He tells Phil that he’s doing fine, that he just needs to lie still and take deep breaths, everything is under control.

A few minutes into his monologue, Clint feels Phil’s fingers twitch in his hold, and Phil’s eyes move beneath his closed lids; he’s coming out of it.

“That’s it,” Clint tells him. “Deep breaths, sir. Just lie nice and still and breathe, we’ve got this.”

Janelle is busy, looking at monitors and tweaking dials; she looks over and shoots him a thumbs-up. Clint’s hand is a little sweaty around Phil’s, but hyper-sensitized, paying attention to every little shiver of movement as Phil’s body shakes off the anesthetic. 

Phil screws up his face, flinching at something; a sensation of some kind of chemically-induced dream, Clint hopes, and not pain. 

“You’re waking up from surgery,” Clint tells him. “Everything went fine, but you need to lay still, okay? Just be still and breathe nice and deep.”

Phil’s eyes flutter, squint open for a second, then slide closed again like the lids are too heavy for him to support.

“Hey,” Clint says, and if his voice gets a little softer, more fond, well, Janelle isn’t going to rat him out and Phil’s too out of it to know. Clint will be back to pissed by tomorrow, probably, but Phil’s lying there pale and vulnerable, wrapped in tubes and wires, and all Clint wants to do is protect him. For now, he’s setting everything else aside and just being a friend.

“Clint,” Phil says—okay, no, it’s really more like he clicks his throat vaguely around most of the consonants, but that’s what he meant to say. Clint’s fluent in mostly-unconscious-ese.

“I’ve got you,” Clint promises, ignoring the tight feeling in his chest. “I’m here,” and he squeezes Phil’s hand over and over; two squeezes, pause, two squeezes. _All clear_.

Clint holds Phil’s hand while he finishes waking up, and while the cradle is finishing its cycle, and while the cradle is being removed and Phil’s abbreviated arm is revealed, newly capped in blue-grey metal, the seam between socket and flesh so smooth it would likely be all but imperceptible once covered by clothing. Phil’s hand clenches in Clint’s when he sees it, and Clint finds his thumb stroking Phil’s pulse, like he can soothe it back to normal.

He doesn’t like to look at the socket either, despite the fact that he had a good bit of design input and participated extensively in the usability testing to make sure it would hold up under field conditions. There’s something so finished-looking about it, so final. The cradle accelerated Phil’s healing so much that you’d think the injury had happened years ago. 

Clint’s mind shies away from that thought. Years ago, Phil had been with them, where he belonged, not getting his hand cut off because he was in a bad situation without proper backup, and yeah, okay, Clint is maybe going to hold a grudge about that for a while. Seriously, Phil took these agents in to be on his team: that’s a plum assignment, a privilege, and if you can’t take care of your CO properly, you don’t _deserve_ a good CO. 

(Clint would never have let it happen, never, he would have done anything—)

“Clint,” Phil says again, and this time he actually manages nearly all of the sounds. “Don’ worry. ‘M okay.”

Fuck, apparently Clint is such a basket case that the _heavily sedated newly-handless guy_ can tell, despite being only half-conscious at best. Clint summons up a grin, though it stretches his face oddly.

“Course not,” he says. “Hey, sir, your hand is pretty cold. Janelle, should he still be so cold? Can we get him some more blankets or something?”

By the time they get Phil appropriately warmed, Nat has turned up for her shift, and Clint can see Daisy lurking in the hall making wistful eyes. He makes some kind of joking comment about leaving Phil alone with his lady friends and pulls his hand away. He tries not to look too obviously like he’s fleeing the scene of a crime, but from Nat’s rolled eyes and Daisy’s startled look as he blows past her, he doesn’t succeed that well.

His hand doesn’t want to straighten out, fingers still curled the way they were around Phil’s. Stupid fingers. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 4, "Hugs and Laser Fingers", will go up by next Sunday, Feb. 28.
> 
> A million thanks and internet hugs to all of you for reading and especially for commenting, kudos-ing, bookmarking, and otherwise letting me know how you feel about this story! It makes me so happy to hear your reactions to my work. You guys are what makes fandom awesome!


	4. Hugs and Laser Fingers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter the robot hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many, many thanks to Kathar and Faeleverte for the amazing beta help.

Clint goes back to what they are now calling “the hand lab” two days after the surgery. He can admit, at least to himself, that he’s been avoiding being around Phil while he’s conscious; the whole surgery experience has left Clint feeling over-exposed and sensitive, like a tooth that just got capped and hasn’t quite healed up yet. It’s easier to be around Phil when there’s no chance that he’s going to look happy to see Clint, or get soft and hazy under drugs and forget that Clint’s not—that they aren’t that close anymore.

  Anyway, Tony finally noticed and started leaving him pointed voicemails about it, so Clint sacks up and accepts the appointment for something called “socket integration testing session” and then actually shows up, figuring that at least in the lab nobody’s likely to have any feelings.

Based on his own experiences with the cradle tech, Clint had kind of expected that Phil would just wake up from surgery and be fine. It turns out, though, that even Dr. Cho’s miracle can’t completely overcome the traumatic effects of general anesthesia, not to mention having an electronic socket grafted to your bones and nerves only a couple months after you got your hand chopped off. He’s seen Phil since the surgery, of course, but only asleep; he hadn’t realized the extent to which Phil still obviously feels like shit. 

Naturally, Phil being who he is, he started pushing himself as soon as he metabolized enough of the sedative to stand up without falling on his ass. Clint enters the lab and sees him, grimly determined, going through some sort of exercise while Tony and Dr. Cho monitor readouts and call technobabble back and forth about how the socket is functioning. 

Clint takes one look at Phil’s set face, sickly pale and sweaty, and skids to a halt. 

“Tony, what the fuck?” He turns sharply on his heel, storming over to the monitor bank and maybe, possibly, looming a little. “Fuck’s sake, Phil, sit down before you fall over.”

“Huh?” Tony looks up at him, taking a moment to focus his eyes away from computer distance. “What’s up?”

Clint gestures expansively at Phil, who has, of course, not sat down.

Tony’s eyes widen. “Shit. Helen? Is he supposed to look like that?”

“I’m fine,” Phil says. His voice is tight and clipped. “Let’s just finish this series; if we stop now, we’ll have to do the whole thing over.”

Dr. Cho frowns. “Well…”

“It’s just two more sets,” Phil says. There’s a stubborn set to his chin that Clint is all too familiar with. It’s a lot less welcome when he and Phil are on different sides.

“Is there some reason this all has to be done _right now?_ ” he asks, keeping his focus on Tony and Dr. Cho. 

“It’s better done as quickly as possible after the surgery,” Dr. Cho says, “but the window for optimal results will be open for another day or two.”

“Or we could probably space out the session,” Tony adds, flicking through displays and looking between them and Phil, his brow creased. 

“I’m _fine_ ,” Phil interjects again. “There’s no need to—”

“I mean, I know there’s a window,” Clint tells Tony, “we talked about the window, but this seems a little excessive.”

Phil scoffs, loud enough for Clint to hear even when he isn’t looking at him, then mutters something he doesn’t catch.

“What was that?” Tony asks.

“I _said_ ,” Phil says, “this whole conversation is pretty ironic coming from a man I once had to chase down because he was trying to train with _two broken legs_.”

Clint’s not sure what his face does at this point, but Tony looks at him, startled, then clears his throat.

“Regardless, pushing too hard at this point could actually be counterproductive, Phil,” Tony says. He’s got his own stubborn face on, so Clint decides that he’ll let Tony take care of it and leaves, looking for somewhere else to be for a while. He wants to make Phil sit down and feed him soup, but also to punch him in the jaw a little for being so cavalier with his health after he has already _died_ and _had his hand chopped off_ , and the competing impulses are starting to fuck with his equilibrium. 

Plus, fuck you anyway, Coulson, they were only hairline fractures. It’s not like he’d had his legs _chopped off with an axe_ or anything. Hypocrite.

After that, he starts giving Phil’s snacks to Daisy to deliver.

“He misses you, you know,” Daisy tells him on the third day, accepting a plate of mini pita wedges spread with a finely calculated amount of fresh hummus and a single olive slice apiece, because Phil likes a little extra salt but not too much.

“Nah, he’s fine,” Clint tells her, pouring roasted Marcona almonds into a ramekin. “Plus, you know, I’m a busy guy.”

She looks pointedly at the parsley he’s sprinkling over the hummus plate, and he jerks his hand back, accidentally garnishing his boots. 

“Look, trust me when I say this, okay? I know you guys have…” she waves the hummus plate around, “… _history_ , but even when you’re just in the corner of the room giving him resting bitch face it makes him happier for some reason. Now, I have to go back to SHIELD soon and tell everyone that he’s doing fine. Despite my new career, I’m not that great at lying to people that know me, so at least come sit nearby in creepy silence from closer up for a couple of days so Agent May doesn’t realize I’m lying and decide to leave her vacation early to come up here and deal with it herself.”

“Whatever, I’m sure it’s fine,” Clint tells her, and receives an epic eye-roll that makes Daisy look her actual age for once. Upon further consideration, though, he concludes that Melinda would totally do it, and then she would probably tranq them both and lock them together in a cell until they broke the stalemate one way or the other. The next time Tony asks him to come observe a round of circuit tests on Phil’s socket, he goes. Maybe it’s been long enough that he’ll be able to look at Phil and not see someone who should still be in the hospital. 

Daisy beams at him from over her laptop when he comes in, and okay, maybe Phil does relax a bit when Clint enters his sightline, his shoulders slumping down a little so he doesn’t look quite so much like he’s braced for some kind of disaster. It’s probably a leftover instinct from when Phil used to be their handler, not that it actually made him do anything useful like, oh, _telling them he wasn’t dead_. Clint scowls.

“Damn, Barton, who pissed in your quiver?” Tony asks. Clint just flips him off and sits down in front of the monitor.

“Are we gonna do this or what?” he asks, just this side of snapping.

“We were just waiting for you,” Tony says, shooting him one of his too-knowing looks. “Whenever you’re ready, Agent Director. Or should it be Director Agent?”

“You could just call me Phil,” Phil says, picking up the testing lead and slotting it into his socket with a solid-sounding click. The ropes of wire coming off the end make him look unnatural, like some kind of 80s vision of a cyborg; like a new wave album cover, though the image is a little marred by Phil’s hoodie. In his regular clothes, though, in his suit? He’d look like something from a lost Devo video.

“Signal’s good,” Tony says. “Run through the exercises for me.”

Clint is familiar with the testing exercises—he had input into their development—but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch Phil say things like “index finger extended” and “trigger pull” while trying to do those things with a hand that isn’t there anymore.

Phil has his eyes shut, and Clint can see his good hand twitching along with the other. Sometimes Phil’s arm moves, making the cables drag on the table. They don’t make any sound, Clint thinks, though it’s not like he would know. His hearing’s for shit at that frequency now.

“Looking good,” Tony says. “It looks like we’ve got full neuromuscular integration on the socket. Fortunately, something very special came out of the fabricators this morning.”

Phil’s shoulders square underneath his hoodie. “It’s ready?”

“Well, the first prototype,” Tony says. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, we’ll need to do some refining, work the kinks out. The simulations are looking promising, though.” He snaps his fingers theatrically and one of his robots trundles over with a metal case that looks like it should maybe have a secret agent handcuffed to it. Tony jumps up and grabs it, setting it down on the table next to Phil and popping open the latches.

Phil doesn’t say anything as he looks into the case, but it’s a very expressive nothing, at least to someone with as much practice reading his face as Clint has. His face only goes that still when he’s trying really hard not to give something away.

“Of course, we’re going to do cosmetic overlay on the final version,” Tony says, probably picking up on the tension in the room, “but not until we’ve got all the functionality locked down.” He clears his throat, rocking back on his heels, hands stuffed in his pockets. “Go ahead, give it a spin.”

Phil picks up the hand. It’s very Terminator looking, the articulated metal skeleton and various wires and circuits clearly visible through the translucent polymer overlay that will help mimic the feel of flesh as well as house things like pressure sensors. The power source—because Tony gets all het up when you call his revolutionary invention a “battery”—is glowing an unnerving blue-white, making the whole thing faintly luminous. It’s not like Clint didn’t know what it was going to look like, since he and Tony have been going over design sketches six ways to Sunday for weeks now, but it’s different seeing it in person, the blue light casting shadows on Phil’s face that turn him ghostly and gaunt.

Jaw set, Phil fits the hand to the socket with only a little fumbling and seats it with a half-turn and a click. A second later he cries out, twitching all over. Clint is vaulting over the monitor bank and crouching beside him about three seconds after that. 

“Tony!” he hollers, cold with fear: he doesn’t know what to do, hovering impotently six inches away from Phil, not sure whether he should try to take the hand off or if it would be dangerous to touch him or _what_.

“Sorry,” Phil gasps. “I’m okay, it just—that felt really weird. I’m okay, Clint.” He starts to reach out, then the hand twitches again, and he pulls it back against his body while Clint flinches away so hard he nearly knocks himself on his ass, terrified to hurt Phil or to make things worse somehow.

“Sorry,” Tony says, sheepish. “I should have warned you, the nerve connection might feel kind of strange at first. It should go away once you acclimate to the prosthesis.”

Clint glares at him, because that’s the kind of shit you tell a guy _first_. Phil is nodding, though, so he obviously doesn’t need Clint to jump to his defense. Clint goes back to his place behind the monitors, stopping on the way to pick up his overturned chair. 

Tony fusses over the hand, attaching one of his clever little inductive connectors to the connection point on the inner wrist. The whole thing is sealed and watertight; Phil won’t ever have to worry about damaging it, at least not for any activity that wouldn’t damage a flesh hand. Clint remembers the first hearing aids he ever had, after his Pop had slammed his head into a wall and he’d gone to sleep and woken to silence. He’d had to make sure never to wear them out in the rain, because if he messed them up he couldn’t get any others. What a difference a few decades, several million dollars, and a genius make.

(Clint had been so happy when his hearing had gotten better, a couple years afterward. He’d thought it meant his luck was finally changing. Stupid kid.)

“Let’s try the exercises again,” Tony says at last. “Remember, it’s going to take a while to train your nerves, so don’t expect everything to work perfectly at first.”

Clint thinks that Tony must be expecting it not to work at all, if he’s taking the time to be reassuring. It’s an accurate expectation; all Phil is able to do is make the hand jerk and flail and clench, seemingly unrelated to which position he’s trying to take. His eyes get more distant and flinty, his neck and jaw tighter, with each failure.

It’s excruciating to watch. Clint’s nearly sick with it, finding it all too easy to put himself in Phil’s place. At least when he was testing the hearing aids Tony made him, they weren’t the first ones he’d ever worn, and even then he’d felt exposed and embarrassed at the way he’d flinched back from his own head, everything too bright and loud and weird-sounding after so long in muffled silence. He tries to give Phil a sympathetic look, but Phil won’t look over at them, his eyes fixed on the opposite wall as sweat beads up at his hairline with how hard he’s trying to make the hand obey him. Clint wishes he hadn’t come, and then thinks that he’s a presumptuous asshole for trying to make this about how _he_ feels.

“Good job,” Tony says at last. “Go, team. Phil, your occupational therapy sessions start tomorrow, keep an eye on your calendar. Wear the prosthesis as much as you can for the next few days; we want to get those synapses trained while your neuroplasticity is still high from the cradle.”

Phil nods, his mouth still folded tight and unhappy at the corners. “Thanks,” he says, and he meets Tony’s eyes squarely for a few seconds before his gaze darts to Clint, then away. “Regardless of what happens, I appreciate everything you’ve done.” 

“De nada,” Tony says. “You know me, anything for an interesting engineering challenge.” 

“Of course,” Phil says. “How silly of me. Clint,” he says, nodding, and then he gathers up the case and leaves the room.

Tony watches Clint for a minute, his eyes too sharp. “You know, that really did go well,” he says. “He’s doing great at transmitting commands through the interface; he just needs some training and practice to sync everything up. Couple of weeks and he’ll be back to his old self, doing all the spying his little heart desires. Only better, because laser fingers.”

“I wish _I_ had laser fingers,” Clint says, but his heart isn’t in it. Tony can talk all he wants, but Phil’s old self died on the floor of the helicarrier, and there’s no going back to it. What Phil will be getting back to is his _new_ self, his secret-keeping, hugging, not-dead self, and that Phil doesn’t seem to care about the same things the old one did.

“Careful what you wish for,” Tony tells him.

“Yeah,” Clint says, swallowing hard. He’s wished for a lot of things in his life that didn’t work out so well in the end. “Yeah, I get that. I’m going to the range.”

He’s listed as an optional attendee on Phil’s next three testing sessions. He declines.

 

Clint shows up to the next team movie night, which Cap had bargained for in exchange for leaving the “family dinner” idea for another time. (Clint owes Nat a major favor-to-be-named-later for making that happen, because he’s not sure how he would have dealt with that except _badly_.) 

The room is full, people milling around all over, so he’s halfway through greetings and shaking hands with Rhodey when he notices Phil and Daisy are both there. He almost turns right around and leaves again; that’s a low blow, Nat, especially bringing Daisy into it with her big eyes and hopeful expression. Daisy seems to think that she and Clint bonded the day of Phil’s surgery (well, okay, they maybe did) and that all he and Phil need is a little encouragement to work through their issues. He hasn’t tried too hard to explain how fucked-up things really are yet. Clint hates disillusioning people; he remembers how it feels. He’s never been one of those people who enjoys telling kids that Santa’s not real or watching earthworms writhe on the sidewalk or anything like that, and telling a kid like Daisy that sometimes, things might be too broken to fix… well. He’ll leave that to Melinda.

  Before he can flee the room, though, Thor sees him. He seems so genuinely pleased—he’s been gone a while on one of his mysterious destiny quests or whatever they are—that Clint doesn’t have the heart to leave.

The last empty seat is on a loveseat next to Phil—that one must be on Daisy, Nat’s more subtle than _that_ when heavily concussed—so Clint perches on the arm of Nat’s armchair and pretends not to notice the way Daisy droops. He doesn’t notice Phil’s reaction, because he isn’t looking at Phil.

Later on, he goes into the kitchen for more pop and cheese curds (he likes the squeak) and overhears Nat and Daisy talking in the pantry.

“…don’t understand them,” Daisy is saying plaintively. From the clanking, she’s rooting around in the tins where they keep the nuts and trail mix. 

“They have some things to work out,” Nat says. “They’ll normalize eventually. They just have to let the pressure build up enough that they can’t help talking to each other first.”

“And here I thought _I_ had issues.” She sounds morally superior in the way only the very young can, and it makes him miss Kate, who’s taken Lucky with her to the beach for a few weeks.

Nat laughs, but not unkindly. “Of course you do,” she says. “You’re one of Coulson’s, aren’t you?” 

Daisy squawks a bit, mock-indignant, but she’s smiling; she likes that thought, Clint can tell. He can’t really blame her. It’s nice to feel like you belong.

She leaves the next day, with a list a mile long of SHIELD business to take care of on Phil’s behalf, so obviously proud that she’s trusted to do it that she practically bounces up the gangplank to the Quinjet that swings by to pick her up. Clint snuck his cell number into her jacket pocket before she left. He wonders how long it will be before she calls him, then remembers how old she is and decides she will almost certainly text first.

Phil is there to see her off, still wearing the glowing test hand. She hugs him again and says something that makes him smile at her a little sadly as he replies. The wind blows Daisy’s hair into Clint’s sightline so he can’t tell what Phil’s saying, but whatever. It isn’t his business anyway.

Phil stands on the helipad for a while after the quinjet leaves, staring out into the New York skyline. His hand is twitching down by his side, jerky but recognizable; _index finger extended. Trigger pull._ Trust Phil to be that faithful to his OT homework. He’s getting the gestures right nearly every time, now, even if the motions are uneven and slow.

Once, Clint would have gone to stand next to Phil. He’d have talked about something dumb and tried to get him to relax a little, tried to coax a smile. He used to make little tick marks on his dayplanner to keep track of how often he managed it, try to beat his own records.

Today, he goes to the range. He’s been letting his training schedule slip lately, and he can’t let his aim get rusty. A sharpshooter who can’t hit the target’s no good to anybody, after all.

 

Target practice is usually a surefire way to settle himself down, but even after training until his stomach is gnawingly empty and his limbs shake, he still feels restless, uncomfortable in his skin. He’s got his phone out and is halfway to calling Nat when he remembers that she’s running a solo mission uptown tonight and isn’t available. Normally when that happens he’ll ask FRIDAY what Tony’s doing, because odds are he’s either in the workshop (and willing to let Clint join him to mess around with arrows,) or he’s had a wild hair to do something like watch all of DS9 in order or sample every variety of sushi available in Manhattan. While the results of those nights are sometimes regrettable, they’re always a good time, at least until the next morning. 

Lately, though, Tony’s been pretty consumed with the robot hand project, and even if Phil isn’t in the lab, Clint just doesn’t feel up to talking about that right now. What he wants is—he’s not even sure what he wants, honestly. To kick back on the couch and watch _How It’s Made_ for a couple of hours—Tony’s got a greatest-hits compilation on the server with all the coolest episodes—with someone who will pet his hair and not make him talk. Or maybe he could pet their hair; he’s not that picky. He just wants that warm feeling, of being quiet with someone who matters, someone who gives a shit about him. He remembers the way that he and Nat and Phil would pile up on someone’s couch after a mission, the way they’d let Clint curl up between them with his head on Nat’s lap and his toes tucked under Phil’s thigh, the way they’d rest their hands on him, tethers back to the real world, comforting and safe and warm. God knows he still drapes himself all over Nat sometimes, but it’s never quite the same, his other side always cold.

Fuck, he needs to get his dog back. Or maybe start dating again. One or the other.

He pulls up his phone and texts Kate, who is of course in his contacts under “Hawkeye,” because Hawkeye.

_Hey girly how’s the beach_  

He waits for a minute just in case she’s looking at her phone right then, but when no answer comes after a few seconds he makes himself be slightly less pathetic and go pull something together to eat. He has an unfocused idea of cooking something like the actual functional adult he is, but after staring vaguely into his fridge for a while he says “fuck it” and grabs a jar of peanut butter, a bag of pretzels, and a banana. He takes his dinner to the couch and fires up his favorite episode of How It’s Made (Traditional Bows - Coffee Machines - Mascots - Hammocks).

He’s about a third of the way through the pretzels, starting his third episode (Bacon - Snowblowers - Luxury Cars), when his phone buzzes. When he unlocks the screen, he sees a picture from Kate: she’s sitting next to Lucky with her arm slung around him. It looks like she was leaning her head close to his to take a selfie, but Lucky turned at the last minute to lick her face, so the picture shows him mid-lick, good eye squinched up in doggy joy, while she tries to twist her mouth away, laughing. He’s glad to see them looking so happy, but he misses them, all the same. 

_Looking good there_ , he sends in reply. This time, Kate texts back almost immediately.

_Psssh you know I always do. How’s the secret project going?_

He pauses, not sure what to tell her. Part of him wants to say it’s going badly and he needs her so she’ll come back to New York, but it’s not like she’s cleared to know about Phil, and he’s not sure that providing moral support is the sort of heroing that she wouldn’t mind cutting her vacation short for. Finally he shrugs and bangs out a reply.

_Ok I guess. Mostly science shit eight now you K eo how it is_

Then he curses his thumbs and sends corrections.

_Right now. Know. Fuckin autocorrect_

She sends back a laughing emoji, and he finds himself grinning at the phone even as it starts ringing; she’s calling him. He hits the key to answer, and FRIDAY automatically pauses the TV and dupes the phone into his aid.

“Hawkeye’s House of Arrows,” he answers, and he swears he can hear her eye-roll.

“So what is it,” she says.

“Huh?”

“You never just text to ask how I am,” she says. “It’s always because you slept with a gangster moll, or you accidentally stole a dog, or you’re out of coffee and you have two broken ankles, or you want to argue about Domitian, or you saw some kind of YouTube archery video that you want me to help you prove wrong.”

“That video was full of _shit_ ,” Clint protests. “It was our duty as Hawkeyes to set the record straight.” 

“Well, okay, granted,” Kate says. “But still. You sound like something’s wrong, doesn’t he Lucky?”

On the other end of the line, Clint hears a _woof,_ and it makes him feel kind of choked up. He maybe sniffles a tiny bit to clear his sinuses, only of course Kate’s on it like a laser scope.

“Okay, now I’m worried,” she says. “Is it the tracksuits? The clown? Your stupid brother? What?”

“No, stand down, it’s nothing like that,” Clint says. “I just—I can’t really talk about it, okay? But it’s been a weird couple of weeks.” He sighs, trying to figure out what he can tell her. “So, there’s this guy. We, uh, we were friends, at SHIELD, back before the whole Avenger thing happened. Like, good friends. But then he died during the Chitauri attack.”

“I’m sorry,” Kate says, her voice gone soft.

“Yeah, it sucked,” Clint says. “And then a couple weeks ago I found out he’s not actually dead.”

“How—wait,” Kate says. “Is this, like, James Bond at the beginning of _Skyfall_ not really dead? Or like Captain America not really dead?”

“Little from column A, little from column B,” Clint says.  “Partially spy, partially weird. He’s here working with us on that project I can’t say anything about, and it’s kind of fucking me up.” He swallows hard, forcing his voice not to change. “I mean, I’m pissed off, you know? That he was alive this whole time and never told me. But also I—it fucking hurt, thinking he was dead. And now he’s not, and I’m glad, but also all the hurt didn’t go anywhere, you know? But as mad as I am, I still care.”

“Of course you do,” Kate says. “Though he obviously doesn’t deserve it, because he’s an inconsiderate douchebag.”

“Kate, no, I don’t—I’m not saying this right,” Clint says. "I don’t want you to hate him.”

“Huh.” Kate’s voice sharpens, and he can practically see her pricking up her ears like Lucky. “Well, we’ll see. I think I’m about ready to get back to the city, anyway. You owe me sushi.”

Clint wonders if she’s maybe coming back out of sympathy for his patheticness, then decides he doesn’t care if she is. “Wednesday?” he suggests. “That place you like has the special.”

“Awesome,” she says. “I’ve had enough hot dogs and pizza to last a year.” She pauses. “You want to swap Lucky back?” she asks, sounding a little too nonchalant.

Clint sighs. He wants to say yes, but Kate hasn’t had much Lucky time since the whole thing with the tracksuits went down. He doesn’t want to short her, especially since his own days haven’t been very conducive to dog care lately. “I mean, I do,” he says. “But I think I should probably wait until this project is over. My schedule’s still a little unpredictable.”

“Well, we can sit on the patio Wednesday night and I’ll bring him,” Kate decides. “You sound like you need a good slobbering.”

“Yeah, I probably do,” Clint agrees. They chat a little longer about nothing in particular, tanning and beach food and the truly unfortunate technicolor shits that result when a dog eats tutti frutti ice cream, before they hang up.

It’s gotten dark, and Clint sits staring at the frozen image of a vat of tumbling pork bellies on the TV screen for a long time before he puts away the rest of the pretzels and peanut butter, throws away his banana peel, and goes to bed.

He doesn’t fall asleep for a long time. 

 

 

Now that Daisy is gone, Nat takes to hugging Phil hello and goodbye every time she sees him. Clint knows that she missed Phil—probably more than she let on at the time—but he’s pretty sure all the conspicuous PDA is for his benefit, especially since now that Phil is recovered from his surgery, she’s going to head back upstate soon and won’t be around to give Clint pointed looks for a while. That insight doesn’t stop him from clenching his jaw until his teeth grind when he sees her tucking herself so neatly under the curve of Phil’s jaw, sees how Phil’s good hand rests lightly on her upper back, a benediction.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Nat tells him later, after Phil has gone off to some kind of SHIELD conference call. “A lot’s changed since the old days. You’ve got choices in this now; you know what you can do.”

Fine, Clint thinks. Fucking _fine_. If it’ll stop this… this _hug orgy_ , then fine. He’ll do this thing and everyone can shut up about it and maybe, maybe it will shake loose the knot in Clint’s chest that rises every time he meets Phil’s eyes. It’s not like it’s going to make things _worse_.

Phil’s in the hall outside the OT lab when Clint catches up with him. He’s walking slowly, shoulders bowed, looking like his thoughts are a million miles away. Clint doesn’t even slow down, just stalks up, tense all over, fists clenched like he’s about to throw down, and grabs Phil before he can think better of it.

Phil makes a startled little _eep_ noise, arms flailing a little under Clint’s hold as he’s pulled off-balance. He’s stiff in Clint’s arms for a long, tense moment, but then he just _sags_ , a good portion of his weight leaning on Clint, his head falling to Clint’s shoulder. He worms his arms around Clint in turn, and he—he fucking _clings_ , is the only word for it, his good hand fisting into Clint’s shirt, pulling it untucked, and the fake one twitching and flexing against Clint’s shoulder, the nerve impulses not quite coordinated enough yet to grasp the way Phil’s trying to.

“You motherfucker,” Clint says, low and harsh, right into his ear. It’s like Phil’s body, warm and breathing against his, broke some wall inside him. Everything he feels is rushing straight out of his mouth in a jumbled mess; he feels like that story about the girl who spit toads out of her mouth when she talked. “You motherfucking _bastard_ , Phil.”

“Yes,” Phil says. He’s breathing fast and thick against Clint’s collarbone.

“I hate you,” Clint says helplessly, trying to pull Phil closer. “I—”

“I know,” Phil says, tightening his grip like he’s trying to pull himself straight through Clint’s chest. His arms are shaking with the force of the hold. “You should, I deserve it.”

“I miss you,” Clint whispers. His voice breaks; he turns so his lips nearly brush Phil’s ear. “I miss you so _fucking_ much—”

“I know,” Phil says. “I’m sorry. I know, now, I—I do, too.”

“Then _why?”_ Clint demands, and he pulls back a little, just enough that he can see Phil’s face. 

Phil’s eyes are over-bright and red around the edges. There's a mean part of Clint that's glad to see it, evidence that Phil hurts too, that Clint isn't alone in this, flailing and miserable. 

He's never claimed to be a nice person. 

“I was afraid,” Phil says, quick and too loud. “I wanted to—you have no idea how much I wanted to. But it had been so long already. I told myself it was better that way. I didn’t think you—you were doing so well, all things considered, you and Nat. I told myself that I’d ruin things for you, that I had to trust the system, but I was lying to myself. It wasn’t because of SHIELD, or Fury, or even Hydra. It was because I had broken your trust, and I couldn’t face the look in your eyes when you found out.” He runs out of air and draws a deep, shuddering breath. It’s just as well, because Clint’s stopped breathing entirely.

“I thought—” Phil starts, and his voice cracks. “I thought it would hurt less to never see you again than to come back and watch you h-hate me for a liar and a coward.” He’s shaking now, Clint can feel it.

Clint gulps in air. “So did it?” he asks, and his voice is a tiny thing. “Hurt less?”

“No,” Phil whispers, and his face crumples at the admission. 

Clint tips his head forward, letting his forehead rest on Phil’s. He can see his options stretching out from this moment like shots he might take. He could hold on to his hurt, tuck it up inside him and make it something to hit with. Phil would accept it, Clint knows; he’d take it like a penance, and Clint would know that’s what he was doing. He can see the way it would play out, every little secret and soft place turned to a weapon, because what punishment could ever be enough? He could make Phil hurt for him until his pain turned hard and bitter, until there really was hatred between them.

“No,” Clint echoes. “No.” He sniffs, wet and ugly. 

He takes the other shot.

“I lied,” he says, “when I said I hate you.” His eyes are burning, even though they’re shut; tears are forcing their way from beneath the lids. “I could never hate you,” and he can feel himself start to crack, the tangle of anger and pain and resentment slipping free.

“I’m sorry,” Phil says again, soft and lost sounding, so unlike himself. Or maybe not so much unlike, anymore. “I’m sorry, Clint, I’m sorry, I’m so _sorry—_ ”

“I forgive you,” Clint says, and Phil shudders all over in his arms. There’s something rising in Clint’s chest, huge and soaring and free, and he wraps his hands more securely around Phil’s body, pulls him into the lee of his chest like he could tuck Phil right inside and hold him there a while. “You’re sorry, and I miss you, and I forgive you, Phil.”

They just stand there for a while, breathing each other’s air. Clint doesn’t want to pull back, doesn’t want to break the moment; he’s half afraid that as soon as he isn’t touching Phil anymore, things will go wrong again. They might have stayed in the hall indefinitely, except that Phil is late for his therapy appointment and Theresa decides to go look for him and nearly runs into them. Clint’s embarrassment over being caught hugging and possibly (definitely) crying, in a _public hallway_ in _Tony Stark’s house,_ gives him the impetus he needs to break away.

They linger for a minute, there in the hall. Phil’s eyes are reddened and his face is wet and blotchy, but he looks at Clint like he’s something too good to be true, like he opened a letter from a collection agency and found a refund check inside. Clint almost reaches out and hauls him back in again—he actually starts to move his hand—but then Theresa clears her throat awkwardly and says “I’ll just…wait for you in the lab, then,” and Phil startles like he’d already forgotten she was there.

“I—therapy,” he says, jerking his head toward the door.

“Yeah,” Clint says. “Um. Have a good session.” 

“Thanks.” Phil smiles at him, a little wobbly but a real smile, and then goes into the lab, letting the door shut behind him.

Clint stands there for a while before he shakes off his stupor and leaves.

Safely back in his apartment, he starts fretting, their reconciliation seeming fragile and hard to believe in now that Phil isn’t right in front of him. He sends Phil a text.

_Dinner later? Pizza’s on me._

It’s two hours before he gets a reply—two hours which he spends largely resisting the temptation to ask FRIDAY where Phil is and what he is doing (because he’s _in therapy_ , Clint _knows_ this) and whether he had checked his messages. Finally, though, the phone buzzes.

_That sounds great. 7?_

Clint types _it’s a date,_ then pauses. Will Phil think he means—no. Of course not. Still, though, he doesn’t want to make things weird. He deletes that message and types _ok_ , then deletes _that_ because it sounds unenthusiastic and he really wants Phil to know that Clint is happy to be his friend again and isn’t going to hold a grudge. Then, he realizes that Phil will see the moving dots that mean he’s typing and wonder what’s taking so long, panics a little, and finally sends _see you then!!_ and a smiley face emoji.

Two exclamation points and a _smiley face emoji._ Clint’s obviously cracking up.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has read and let me know their thoughts!! Your feedback is so great and very much appreciated.
> 
> Chapter 5, "The Sandwiches Are A Metaphor," will be posted on or around next Sunday, March 6.


	5. The Sandwiches are a Metaphor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're friends again, right? Clint's great at friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Amazing beta work by Kathar (and keep an eye out for her new story posting soon because it's SUPER GREAT!!).

Successfully inviting Phil over for pizza gives Clint a warm glow of pride that lasts for about five minutes. Then, he looks around himself and realizes that his living room has picked up its usual strata of sketches and dried-out pens and empty pop cans and fletching jigs and bowstring wax and tennis shoes and half-unpacked go bags with boxer shorts hanging out, and isn’t exactly what you might call company-ready. In the old days, he’d have shrugged it off, because it’s not like people who have kept you from bleeding out with their bare hands are going to turn up their noses at your housekeeping. Now, though, he’s a little worried that if he has Phil over and his place looks like a sty, Phil might think he doesn’t care or something, or that he’s trying to make some kind of point instead of just having been really preoccupied lately. He starts by thinking he’s just going to pick up the most obvious crap, but then he keeps seeing more things that need attention, crumbs on the counter, a sticky spot by the coffee machine where he dropped his mug one time, some ancient kibbles and bits on the floor from the last time he’d had Lucky, and before he knows what’s happened it’s two hours later and everything is shiny and smells like lemons.  

He takes a shower. He isn’t really dirty _per se,_ but he smells like citrus cleaner and he’s still congested and sticky-faced from all the crying he’s pretending he didn’t do while hugging Phil (and possibly for a little while afterward.) Once he’s done, clean and relaxed and grateful anew for the spectacular water pressure the Tower enjoys, he spends way too long standing naked in his bedroom trying to decide what to wear. If it were Nat coming over, or if it had been Phil in the old days, he’d have thrown on whatever; they’d seen him in everything from a sequined g-string to full body armor and he didn’t have to dress for them any differently than he did for himself. If it was another friend coming to hang out, someone like Tony or Kate, that was more of a casual wear situation. Colleagues he didn’t know very well, or dates, then he’d dress up a little more.

He can’t decide what category Phil falls into these days. He’s different; Clint’s different too. They’re strangers, in some ways, but in all the others, Phil is still the man who’d been practically part of Clint for nearly a decade.

“Fuck it,” Clint says at last, and forces himself to stop freaking out over his outfit like a teenager getting ready for prom (like he’d even know, not like they had prom in the circus) and just get dressed already. He puts on his favorite jeans, a purple hoodie over his faded bullseye t-shirt, and warm socks (the Tower’s always a little chilly, because of all the computers, and his feet get cold.)

His doorbell rings, making him jump. It’s seven on the dot, naturally; at least one thing about Phil hasn’t changed.  

Clint scrambles to answer the door, only skidding a little—sock feet plus hardwoods is a good time—and pulls it open just before Phil rings the bell a second time. (The bells aren’t strictly necessary, of course, not with an AI running the building, but sometimes a guy likes to feel normal and have people just ring the damn doorbell.)

Phil looks—good, Clint realizes. Certainly a damn sight better than he had earlier that day. He’s wearing casual clothes, but nice ones, dark slim-fitting jeans and a green button-down. He’s shifting his weight a little, looking not quite settled, but his face looks softer, easier than it had before; he looks like he had a nap, or a drink, or a massage. Glancing down, Clint realizes that he’s wearing the hand, but something is covering up the telltale blue glow. It’s a glove, he realizes after a second, thin dark flexible leather.

“Did you accessorize your robot hand?” Clint blurts, then smacks himself in the head. “No, sorry, that was terrible, don’t answer that,” he says. 

Phil grins at him, small but genuine, and Clint can feel a knot of tension in his back unfurl a little at the sight.

“I thought about getting a silver sequined one like Michael Jackson,” Phil says gravely, “but upon reflection I decided it might be a little over the top.”

“Ow!” Clint says, in his best Jacksonian falsetto, and tries to moonwalk back into the apartment. He bumps into his end table and knocks over a lamp. He’s not exactly sure where that came from—some kind of emotional hangover?—but it makes Phil laugh, really laugh, so what’s a little humiliation between friends?

“Sit down, you lunatic,” Phil says, his smile still bunching up in the corners of his eyes as he watches Clint set his lamp to rights. “You promised me pizza.”

One of the truly great things about Stark Tower is the amazing pizza joint on the third floor, which gets a hefty break on its rent in exchange for providing food on retainer to the residents of the Avengers sections. Clint hands Phil the menu and lets him pick the toppings; he tries and fails not to be touched when he sees that Phil included pineapple, which Clint loves, even though he always said that it was a crime against pizza.

Once the order’s in, Clint’s not really sure what to do. Phil doesn’t look that sure, either, hovering in the middle of the living room like he thinks Clint might change his mind and ask him to leave at any moment.

“So, um,” he says. “Therapy go okay?”

Phil shrugs a little. “Not bad,” he says. “Fine motor control’s still a bit of a stretch, but part of that’s the hardware, apparently. Tony’s working on the Mark II, he thinks it’ll be ready in a day or so.”

“Cool,” Clint says. He tries to think of a follow-up question that isn’t overly intrusive or potentially triggering, and stalls out. What is _wrong_ with him? He was communicating better when he was using half-eaten baked goods instead of words. Regroup, Barton. “So, uh, make yourself comfortable wherever,” he says, waving his arm vaguely at the couch. “I’m gonna get, like, plates and stuff.” 

“I could help,” Phil offers.

“No! um, I mean, I got it. You’re the company, company doesn’t have to help,” Clint says, then tries not to wince at the way Phil’s face falls then goes blank. Phil never used to be “company” in Clint’s home. Clint never used to want to hide from him. He wonders, for a sick, sinking moment, if this is it; if somehow, during his grieving, he somehow closed their relationship out in his head and it’s gone now.

No. Fuck that. It’s like Nat said: if it’s gone, they’ll get it _back_.

He ducks into the kitchen and tries to stay busy while still working slowly enough to fill time; it helps to have an actual task to do. He pulls out plates and glasses and napkins and silverware and drinks and ice, salt and pepper and hot sauce even though he’s pretty sure neither of them will want hot sauce, and spreads it all out on the counter. 

“You want beer or pop?” he calls over his shoulder.

“Beer would be great, Clint, thanks,” Phil replies. Clint grabs two of the fancy pint glasses that came with the apartment—Tony considers barware of all kinds to be a housewares staple—and pours them each a cold one. Then, with no possible task left in the kitchen, he brings them both over and sits next to Phil on the couch, handing him his glass carefully.

They sip their beers in silence for a few minutes, and then the bell rings; Clint pops up so fast he almost spills his beer to go answer the door. The food smells amazing; Clint busies himself with spreading everything out on the coffee table, the pizza sharing space with an order of garlic bread and a small house salad, because Phil is still growing neurons or something and needs his nutrients. He piles his plate with pizza and bread; when Phil gives him a significant look, he adds a scoop of the salad, making sure to get plenty of cheese.

Clint has sat on a lot of couches with Phil, or Nat, or Phil and Nat; he’s eaten a lot of pizza. It’s something of a touchstone for him. No matter the precise configuration of pizza and friends and soft furnishings, it’s always felt the same way, like home and rest and safety.

It just feels wrong, tonight.

Before, Clint would wedge himself into whatever space was available, draped over or around whoever was nearby, stealing bites of whatever plate was closest. Now, he’s ultra-conscious of the space between him and Phil on the couch. It’s just a foot or so, but there might as well be a force field between the cushions. They’re okay now, he thinks; they both want to be, anyway. But yesterday they weren’t really talking and a couple of hours ago they were hugging and crying and now Clint’s in this weird space where he doesn’t know the rules anymore. He doesn’t even know what he wants the rules to be. He wants to touch Phil, to work on convincing his hands that Phil is really there. He wants to ask Phil where they go from here, what’s next for them. He stays quiet, though. Things between them feel fragile, like a china vase on a wobbly shelf; he’s afraid if he steps wrong he’s going to bring the whole thing crashing down. He stuffs half a piece of pizza in his mouth at one time, on the theory that it will leave less room for his foot. 

Next to him, Phil’s working through his own plate in silence. Clint can’t help but notice that he uses the left hand as little as possible, keeping it down at his side most of the time. He’s chosen the left side of the couch, so his bad arm is away from Clint, and his body is angled a little away too. A conscious choice, or unconscious protectiveness? Clint’s breath catches at the thought that Phil might be trying to hide his weaknesses. Phil shouldn’t have to hide anything from Clint, ever. Clint would never use Phil’s secrets against him.

What the hell has been happening to Phil, that he doesn’t trust his team anymore?

Clint swallows a lump of pizza, suddenly reluctant to let his brain keep talking. Beside him, Phil pokes at his salad.

“Are you caught up on _Dog Cops?_ ” Clint asks at last, then winces, because Phil’s been a little busy saving people from Hydra and recovering from having his arm cut off, and likely hasn’t had much thought to spare for television. It was always more Clint’s thing, anyway; he knows Nat and Phil only watched because he wanted to, half the time.

Phil perks up, though. “Actually, I haven't seen any of this season,” he says. “We could watch some, if you wanted.”

Clint grins. “Oh man, the premiere was so good!” he says, dropping the pizza crust he’d been pulling to bits and wiping his hands on his jeans before looking around for the remote. It appears under his nose, and he looks up to see Phil holding it out with a little half-smile. It’s so familiar that he feels himself sagging back into the cushions, grinning like a fool. 

Maybe things aren’t great right now, but if Phil’s still willing to sit on Clint’s couch and eat pizza and watch TV, they can’t be hopeless.

They watch the season opening two-parter, and the funny case-of-the-week that came next. Somewhere in the middle, Clint gets up for a refill and forgets himself enough to flop down in the corner of the couch with his feet up. He’s actually nudging his cold toes under Phil’s thigh when he realizes what he’s doing, and freezes.

“Um, sorry,” he says, starting to pull back, but Phil puts his hand on Clint’s ankle. 

“You don’t have to move,” he says. “I don’t mind.”

Clint sags back into the cushions, and puts his toes back where they were. Phil gives him a little smile and re-starts the episode.

Phil’s leg is very warm.

As the end credits of the fourth episode (the one where Sgt. Whiskers finds another victim of the Kibble Killer) roll, Phil looks at his watch and groans.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to get going,” he says, looking apologetic. “I have a call at six.”

Clint bites back his first reaction, and then also his second and third, which are all variations on the theme of _don’t leave_ or _stay here_ or _I’ll walk you back_. Phil’s got his own apartment and his own bed two floors away, it’s not like he’s going to have to take the subway. Clint needs to get a hold of himself, not let his stupid separation anxiety mess things up with Phil when they’ve finally started to go right again. “No problem,” he says at last, when he can trust himself to actually say something non-stupid. “Thanks for coming over.” 

“I had fun,” Phil says. There’s something awkward about the whole thing; Phil isn’t supposed to be _company_. He’s supposed to have a key, to come and go whenever he wants.

“Are we okay?” Clint blurts, then scrubs his hands through his hair. “I mean. Shit. I know this is really fucking weird right now, Phil, but I just—I don’t know what I’m supposed to even say to you, but we have to be okay, right?”

Phil closes his eyes for a long few seconds, then steps into Clint’s space, putting his good hand on Clint’s shoulder and squeezing. It’s a familiar gesture, one that’s meant “good shot” and “stay calm” and “let me beat this bozo up for you” and a hundred other things through the years.

“That’s up to you,” he says, quiet and intense. “You’re the injured party, here. But, Clint, as far as I’m concerned, we’ll always be okay.”

“Okay, then,” Clint says. “Okay. And now I’m going to stop saying okay and say, uh. Goodnight, I guess.”

“Goodnight, Clint,” Phil says. “See you tomorrow?”

“Count on it,” Clint tells him.

“Yeah,” Phil says, and his voice gets a little thick. “I do.”

The warm glow Clint feels from that lasts through the rest of Phil leaving and cleaning up the leftovers. Clint’s feeling a little like a pinball tonight, bouncing around between emotions so fast he can hardly keep up with the score. Overall, though, things are good. He thinks. He’s pretty sure things are  going to be good. They both _want_ them to be good, anyhow, and that’s the important thing, right?

He opens up his laptop to look up when the _Dog Cops_ midseason finale is. Then he starts making a Netflix queue of stuff that Phil might like but probably hasn’t seen yet, in case he wants to come hang out again sometime. Then he thinks that maybe he could order something besides pizza, and starts browsing menus. Two hours later, he finds himself on the Tower intranet, trying to determine whether it’s possible to order breakfast to be delivered upstairs at a quarter after five in the morning.

(It is.)

See, Clint isn’t one to schedule work meetings before eight (hell, not before ten if he can help it), but Phil is. He claims it’s because of time zones, but Clint has always thought it was half due to workaholism and half a way to subtly punish people who pissed him off. Regardless, Clint’s seen him do enough of these things that he can already predict how it will go; up at a quarter to five, showered and dressed by a quarter after, inbox triage and coffee until five-thirty and then a quick breakfast while he preps for the call.

At first, Clint’s just going to have coffee and a danish sent up from the coffee shop, just a friendly gesture to show that he’s not mad anymore. That things might still be weird a little but they’ll get over it. He hopes.

Whatever. Breakfast.

The coffee order’s easy enough, at that time of the morning—a triple-shot red-eye with cream and two sugars, biggest size they have. He’s browsing the danish selection when he remembers that Phil is still technically healing and thus should probably have protein, and switches over to the breakfast sandwiches. Phil likes a good bagel, but they’re hard to eat one-handed. Croissants are too flaky; Phil won’t want to get crumbs everywhere if it’s a video call. He finally decides on toasted sourdough with egg, bacon, and extra-sharp cheddar, then adds tomato and caramelized onion for vitamins. He adds a fruit cup, too, then shrugs and goes back to add the danish he was going to send originally. If Phil doesn’t want it for breakfast, he can have it later.

Halfway through filling out the “special instructions” field, he has a moment of doubt. Maybe it would be better if he just went downstairs and got the stuff himself and brought it by? But maybe that would be too much. Just because they hung out one time, that doesn’t mean Phil wants Clint up his ass at all hours of the day. But maybe Phil wouldn’t like opening his door to a stranger? But all the delivery people who are cleared to deliver to the Avengers sections have been vetted, and Phil knows how to double-check them with FRIDAY.

After waffling for an embarrassingly long time, Clint finally clicks the “delivery” box and submits the order, timed to arrive at 5:15 the next morning. Which is in four hours, shit. Clint takes out his hearing aids—he can sleep in them, but they start to bother him if he does it too often—and puts himself to bed, fully intending to sleep in the next day.

He wakes up at four and remembers that Phil might take longer to get ready in the morning now, because of his hand, and his delivery might come while Phil’s in the shower, and then he’d either have to hurry or keep the delivery person waiting, which he hates to do, because Phil is considerate like that.

He can’t stand the thought of embarrassing or upsetting Phil with a gesture he’d meant be nice, so he decides to just go down and get the stuff himself. He showers fast and makes it to the coffee shop by the time they open at 4:30. His hair’s still wet, but it’s not like anyone will care. He’s in time to intercept the delivery, anyway, and adds a coffee and a ham-and-cheese muffin for himself, since he’s already there. He asks for the order to be ready at five, and kills a little time with his coffee and his phone, playing guess-which-headline-is-a-cover-story over email with Nat, who just got back from a mission in Belgrade (or possibly Belfast, he mixes those two up sometimes) and is still running on European time. There’s a gas main explosion in Sienna that he’s pretty sure is some kind of superpower-related incident, though Nat is leaning toward illegal weapons development gone wrong (as though that shit ever goes right.)

His order’s ready at five on the dot, and he gathers up the bags and the drink holder and heads back up to the guest floor. 

“Hey, FRIDAY, can you tell me if Director Coulson is up?”

“Yes,” FRIDAY says. “Director Coulson has granted you access to that information.”

Clint waits a few seconds. “So…. is he up?”

“He exited the shower five minutes ago. Would you like me to relay a message?”

“No! No, just…” the elevator dings, doors sliding open at Phil’s floor, and he stands there awkwardly for a minute; he doesn’t want to get there too early, but he also doesn’t really want to hover outside Phil’s door like a creepy stalker. 

The elevator doors slide closed again.

“Agent Barton?” FRIDAY asks. “Did you want another floor?”

He snorts out a breath. “No, sorry, this one is fine, thanks,” he says, and the doors open again.

“I can ask Director Coulson if he’s at home to visitors,” FRIDAY suggests.

“I’m probably just going to drop this off,” Clint tells her. “I just want to make sure he’s had time to finish getting ready.”

“You’re cleared to access the security feeds,” she says, helpfully.

Clint chokes on air. “No thank you!” he wheezes. “I’m just going to… give it a minute. A few minutes. And then I’ll ring the bell, and you won’t open the door until Phil tells you, okay?” He could just walk in, he knows. But it seems like that would be too forward, or something. Phil might have put Clint on his access list, but that doesn’t mean he wants Clint just walking in at all hours of the day.

“Whatever you say, Agent Barton,” FRIDAY says. Clint wonders if it’s his imagination that she sounds a little miffed. 

He stands around awkwardly outside Phil’s apartment—but just out of sight of the peephole—until a quarter after, then goes to ring the bell. 

“Director Coulson says to come right in,” FRIDAY says after a few seconds, her tone smug.

“I know,” Clint says. “You told me so.” The door opens with an accusatory air and he makes his way to the breakfast nook. 

“I’ll be out in a minute,” Phil calls. “Make yourself at home. The coffee should be done, if you want some.”

“Thanks,” Clint calls back, though he’s just there to drop Phil’s food off. It would be rude to just leave without seeing Phil, though. He doesn’t want Phil to think he’s mad. He’ll stay and say hi, he decides.

Phil emerges, a little pink and damp around the edges, barefoot and with his shirt not buttoned up all the way. He looks so exposed like that, so vulnerable, his throat bare; Clint’s chest goes tight with the desire to protect him, like he needs to wrap Phil up in kevlar or something and tuck him away somewhere safe. 

“Food,” he says, and gestures at the table, where he’s plated Phil’s breakfast. The shop only cut the sandwich into two pieces, when Clint clearly specified four, but he was able to fix that before Phil came out.

Phil blinks. “Thank you,” he says, “but where’s yours?” He gestures at the table, where there is a plate with the sandwich, a little cup with the fruit, and a saucer with the danish, as well as Phil’s giant coffee and some silverware and a cloth napkin Clint found in the kitchen and thought what the hell, they had laundry service.

“I wasn’t gonna stay,” he blurts. “I mean,” he adds hastily, because Phil’s face just went tight, “I know you have a call and everything. I didn’t want to get in your hair, I just… I was up anyway, and I was getting a muffin, and I thought, hey, maybe Phil’d like breakfast.” 

“That was very considerate,” Phil says, his eyes crinkling happily. “Please, I’d really like it if you joined me. At least have some coffee?”

“I—sure, yeah, okay,” Clint says, because what else is he going to do at this time of the morning? He grabs his muffin and tops his coffee up from Phil’s pot, and takes them both over to the table.

It’s comfortable, reassuring and familiar. They don’t talk much, but in between the soft sounds of crunching and the coffee steam, Clint can feel himself uncoiling. Phil seems better, too; he’s hiding his left hand less, actually using it occasionally to steady his dish as he forks up fruit. Whenever he gets a piece of pineapple, he reaches over and puts it on Clint’s plate absently. Clint didn’t bring himself a fork, because he only had the muffin, but it’s fine, he can eat fruit with his fingers. Phil looks over and notices him licking pineapple juice off the back of his hand and just shakes his head, smiling, and it’s almost like old times. 

Clint’s on his third coffee refill, kicked back happily and more or less just breathing in the smell, when FRIDAY pipes up to give Phil the five minute warning for his call. Crap.

“I’m sorry,” he tells Phil. “I didn’t mean to take up your prep time.”

“It’s really no problem,” Phil insists, standing up and brushing himself off, even though Clint doesn’t see any crumbs. “This is just a check-in with Sk—Daisy. You should stay, I’m sure she’d love to say hi.”

“What did poor Daisy do to you that you're making her report in at 0600?”

“She’s in Italy,” Phil explains, buttoning his shirt. He’s gotten a lot better at it; Clint is hardly even tempted to help.

“Wait, the Sienna thing? I _knew_ that was a cover!” he gloats. “Please tell me it’s powers.”

“Are you two still doing that?” Phil smiles at him with soft eyes. “It’s definitely a cover, but we haven’t narrowed down what for. Stay and listen in, and maybe you can scoop Natasha for once.”

“Well, when you put it that way,” Clint says, and pulls up one of the kitchen chairs behind Phil’s shoulder so that he’ll show up in the video feed.

Daisy _is_ happy to see him, and it _did_ turn out to be powered people behind the incident in Sienna. Clint refills his coffee and trails after Phil as he leaves for the day. Phil’s got more therapy and a session with Tony to finalize specs on the Mark II; Clint goes with him as far as the elevator and peels off at the training floor. He’s feeling antsy, full of nervous energy; he needs to work out for a while, shake some of the cobwebs out. Things are going well, but Clint gets kind of—pushy, sometimes. Clingy. He’s a little worried that he’ll screw something up if he doesn’t give Phil a break from the Clint Barton Experience.

In mile five of his treadmill run, Clint remembers that he’d left the packaging from the coffee shop on Phil’s kitchen counter, complete with the receipt that had his lengthy preparation instructions, timestamped one in the morning. He briefly considers running up to Phil’s to get it, but it’s not like Phil is going to read his trash, right? Anyway, Clint’s done a lot more embarrassing things over the years than getting a little too enthusiastic with takeout, and it’s not like Phil isn’t a giant mother hen himself when his people are injured.

When he sees Phil at lunch, later, he’s wearing different clothes, so he’s obviously been home, but he doesn’t say anything about Clint’s white lie. Bullet dodged; score one for Hawkeye.

“So, Phil, what do you have going on this afternoon?” Natasha asks, passing a platter of sandwiches down the table. Clint grabs a BLT, cuts it into quarters, transfers it neatly to Phil’s plate, then takes a chicken salad for himself and leans around Phil to pass the platter to Tony. It’s heavy, and he doesn’t know how much load the hand can take yet.

Tony stares at him, making no move to take the dish.

“What?” Clint demands. “Come on, Stark, sandwich time.”

Tony leans forward and makes a face at Natasha. Rude.

“Did he just—”

“Yeah,” Nat says, taking a neat bite out of her own sandwich.

“And Coulson _lets_ —”

Nat shrugs. “You’ll get used to them,” she tells Tony.

“It’s like you’ve never had a teammate help out when you’re injured before,” Clint says, scowling. Tony better not be making Phil feel bad about needing help; God knows he’s terrible about it at the best of times. “Oh, wait.”

Tony finally takes the platter, rolling his eyes. “Bitch, bitch.”

“Better not let Pepper hear you using gendered slurs,” Clint says, and feels a mean little stab of triumph when Tony’s eyes widen.

“Hey, now,” Tony says. “No need to be hasty.”

“It really is nice to see you all again,” Phil remarks, sounding completely sincere.

“Sharing _is_ caring,” Tony says. “I got a card from Cap one time that said so.” He’s disassembled three sandwiches and is making a new one out of their components. “So, where _are_ you off to this afternoon? I wanted to test the Mark II, but your calendar is blocked off, and unlike some people at this table, you keep your schedule updated.”

“I’ve got some SHIELD business in Queens,” Phil says, and Clint inhales part of a potato chip. While he’s trying to simultaneously cough it out and avoid a thwack on the back from Tony, Natasha gives Phil a classic Black Widow stink-eye.

“Funny,” she says. “Daisy and Melinda gave me the impression that you weren’t taking any solo missions until you were finished with rehab.”

Phil looks shifty, in his Phil-like way which is mainly expressed in the corners of his eyes and a little bit in that one pair of muscles right in front of his ears. Natasha is the _best_.

“It isn’t a _mission_ ,” Phil says. He picks up one of his sandwich wedges and takes a big bite. Nat just gives him the gimlet stare the whole time he’s chewing.

“Really,” she says, just as he swallows.

“It’s just a meeting with a contact,” Phil says defensively.

“Like Akron?” she asks sweetly.

Clint, his airway finally clear, takes a swig of water to soothe his scraped throat. “Maybe like Yellowknife,” he adds, helpfully. He’s trying not to sound as pissed as he feels, because seriously? If _Clint_ had tried to run a solo mission while he was still rehabbing an injury, Phil would have lost his shit.

“Mmm, or Conakry,” Nat agrees. Strike Team Delta really had a lot of missions that started with _a meeting with a contact_ and ended with someone needing stitches and/or destroying some kind of heritage site.

Phil’s shoulders slump a few inches, and Clint fights the urge to feel bad about taking away his fun. God knows Phil must be stir-crazy—hell, _Clint_ is kind of stir-crazy after the last few weeks, and there’s nothing to stop him going wherever he wants—but that’s no excuse for being careless.

“You shouldn’t wait until the last minute to request backup,” Nat tells Phil, passing him a plate of carrot sticks. “Clint might have been busy this afternoon.”

Tony coughs dramatically. The cough sounds suspiciously like the words “fat chance.”

Clint ignores him. “Lucky for you, I’m available,” he tells Phil. He picks up the spoon to put some ranch dip on Phil’s plate, then stops, staring at his own hand in horror. Okay, maybe Tony has a little bit of a point. He puts the spoon down and passes Phil the bowl, instead.

Tony starts to say something, then exhales in a wheeze that sounds suspiciously like the sound of a man getting an elbow to the ribs.

“Can you be ready by two?” Phil asks Clint. 

“Sure,” Clint tells him. “Eat your carrots, you need the Vitamin A. Should I dress for patsy or muscle?” 

Phil dips a carrot and bites into it, his very crunching sounding resigned. “This is just an information broker, and he’s about seventy,” he says. “Try not to look too terrifying.” 

“Can do, boss.” Clint wolfs down three sandwiches and then runs off to change into something suitable. Cargo pants, because you can fit a lot of useful stuff in the pockets, and a tight t-shirt in case he needs to cross his arms and scowl menacingly. He brings the messenger bag with his emergency bow and quiver, and a few of his smaller knives. And a taser. And a garrote. Some throwing stars. One of the awesome miniature non-ferrous pistols he liberated from SHIELD.

He waffles over whether he should switch out his everyday hearing aids for the ones he wears in the field. While he’s in the Tower, FRIDAY is constantly running sound compensation algorithms and using her own sensors to supplement what the aids pick up. His field aids are bigger, and link both to an external chip pack and to the Iron Man suit for a processing boost. He finally decides to stick with the everyday pair, which are practically invisible while worn. Without Tony and his always-on AI connection nearby, the field aids are too showy for this kind of work. No sense advertising your vulnerabilities.

When he arrives in the lobby at the stroke of two, Phil looks him up and down and sighs. “Well, at least you aren’t audibly clanking,” he says.

“If you’d told me that was the parameter, I could have brought the stun grenades,” Clint says. He’s just kidding. He wasn’t really going to bring the stun grenades. He’s already got an Icer in his ankle holster, stun grenades would just be overkill.  

Either Phil still has some good sense or he’s given in to the inevitable, because he’s got one of the SI cars waiting in the garage, and Sabine is driving it. Sabine is one of Tony and Pepper’s personal security staff; she looks like a pixie, drives like Mad Max, and fights like a German mob enforcer. (Clint knows from experience.) She’ll be excellent backup in case Phil’s information broker gets testy.

“So,” Clint says, once Sabine has confirmed their destination and closed the soundproof partition, “you wanna brief me on this mission, or should I wing it?”

“What, you mean you don’t already know?” Phil snaps. “You aren’t about to tell me that you and Natasha already took care of it?”

“I—we didn’t,” Clint stammers. “I mean—I just wanted to—you were going alone.” He waves his hand helplessly at Phil. “That was always the rule, right? Nobody works without backup. You said that’s why we have teams.” He pulls his hands into his lap, slumping a little into the plush leather seat.

Phil scrubs his good hand over his face, rasping over fine stubble, and sighs. “No, you’re right,” he says. “Of course I did. I’m sorry.” He touches Clint’s arm, fleeting as a falling leaf, then pulls back his hand when Clint looks over at him. “It isn’t you I’m angry at,” he admits. “It was wrong of me to bite your head off like that.”

“No, Phil, I understand, I do,” Clint says hurriedly, words tripping over each other. “You think I don’t remember what it’s like? How many times have you watched my back when I was in long-term rehab, huh? I know from stir-crazy. Just—just let me help, okay? Please? I know I’m probably hovering too much.” He looks away from Phil, out the tinted window at the Manhattan foot traffic. “I mean, I can back off, Phil. I will, I’ll stop with the, you know, food and stuff. Just please don’t go out alone.” He bites his lip, swallowing down the lump in his throat. “I’m not ready for you to be dead again,” he blurts, then feels his face go hot. “I mean—”

“Clint, no,” Phil says, over-loud, his voice high and pained. “You aren’t doing anything wrong. It’s not you, I promise. I’m just frustrated with myself right now.”

“You don’t have to be nice about it,” Clint says. “I am aware that I’ve been… overcompensating. I just… keep not realizing it until I’m already in the middle of doing something? But I’ll work on it. It’s just me being fucked up, it doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re capable, I swear.” It’s the opposite, if anything; there’s a greedy, petty, shameful part of him that almost wishes Phil were _less_ capable, that he actually needed Clint around for good. 

Phil laughs, short and sharp. “I wish I could say the same.” There’s a twist to his mouth that Clint doesn’t like.

“Phil. Seriously. Do I have to start listing off the times that I’ve heard you give an agent the ‘your body needs to heal, your worth is not diminished by being human’ speech? Because just off the top of my head, I can think of six times for me and two for Nat, and I’m pretty sure I could call Daisy right now and get Bobbi and Melinda on the line for at least twice more each.”

Phil groans, but there’s a rueful smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.  “God, no, I literally gave Bobbi that speech an hour before I left; she’d never let me live it down.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes you have to suck it up and eat your goose sauce, Phil.” 

“My what?”

OK, so that maybe isn’t the way the saying goes exactly, but Phil knows what he means. “You know what I mean, Phil.” Phil’s deflection skills only work on Clint when Clint decides to go along with them. He’s wise to Phil’s ways.

Phil chuckles, and Clint grins at him, delighted at the evidence that Phil probably isn’t _that_ annoyed by Clint’s attentiveness.

“I really am sorry I snapped at you,” Phil says.

“I understand. And seriously, I can back off. I know it’s weird. Hell, I think Tony’s started running the passive mind-control detection scans on me again to make sure my body hasn’t been hijacked by some kind of alien who’s really obsessive about nursing or something.” It took Clint a long time to be able to joke about that, and the sharp look Phil shoots him tends to make him think Phil knows it. (He wonders how much Phil really does know, what Natasha might have told him, or Tony. He kind of hopes it’s a lot. It feels wrong for Phil not to know Clint as well as he knows himself… or at least seem to.)

Phil looks down at his lap, where he has his good hand wrapped around the artificial one, both of them encased in thin leather gloves since the synthetic skin isn’t ready yet. “You don’t have to—no,” he cuts himself off. “I should say what I mean. I’m not _tolerating_ your attention, Clint. I like it. It’s been a long time since I had—since someone—” he makes a frustrated sound, then starts again. “My agents look to me,” he says simply. “To lead, to reassure, to be okay. There aren’t many places in my life now where I can show it if I’m not.”

Clint scoots closer on the bench seat, and after a second Phil lets the starch out of his spine, slumping just a little until their shoulders brush.

“You never have to be okay with me,” Clint tells him. “I mean, I hope that you will be, because I hate that you’re hurting. But all I need is for you to be _around_ , in whatever shape you come, yeah? I just want you _here,_ okay or fucked up or anywhere in between.”

“You have no idea how good that is to hear.” Phil’s voice actually trembles a little. It makes Clint want to do something, fix things somehow so Phil never has to be surprised again that there’s someone in his life who doesn’t need a show of strength.

“I think I have some idea.” He nudges Phil companionably with his elbow, and gloats when Phil responds by leaning a little heavier into Clint’s side. “So,” Clint says. “About this mission.”

  “Robert Engalls,” Phil says. “He’s run a jewelry repair shop in Queens for the last forty years. He does some nice custom work, is very reasonably priced for ring sizing, and has a thriving sideline as an information broker. I’ve worked with him before.”

“Not everyone we’ve worked with before is trustworthy,” Clint says, wary.

“He’s about as likely to be a Hydra plant as I am,” Phil says. “You’ll see when we get there. Plus, he was always one of my personal contacts, not on the official lists.” At the higher levels, it was expected that SHIELD agents would cultivate a variety of covers and contacts, of which at least some would be kept for the Director’s eyes only. Clint’s own private list had come in pretty useful when the whole Insight mess had gone down and he’d had to cut and run in the middle of an op in bumfuck nowhere, North Dakota.

“So this guy, he’s got information you need? Or are you hoping to get him to broker something for you?”

“Little of both,” Phil says. “Daisy told you about the Inhumans?”

Clint nods.

“There’s a few rumors I’m hoping he can help me pin down; bar fights that got way out of hand, car accidents where one person miraculously survived, that kind of thing. And I want to spread the word that anyone who finds themselves with powers can come to us, that we can keep them safe.” He frowns. “I think there’s someone else going after the newly-powered. A few trails have gone suddenly cold on us in a way that I don’t like.”

Clint pulls a face. “Yeah, I’m not crazy about the options in the ‘who besides us might want to collect a bunch of super-powered people’ list.”

“Exactly. It was bad enough when we were dealing with scientific enhancements; that sort of thing takes a lot of infrastructure, so the barriers to entry are pretty high. This, though…”

“It could get pretty ugly, that’s for sure,” Clint agrees. “And a bunch of poor shmucks who just wanted to prevent heart disease stuck in the middle.” 

“It’s bad enough the ones with minor abilities. They’re mostly just scared. But Daisy almost brought the base down on top of us before she got a handle on her powers. Can you imagine what it would be like to accidentally burn down your own home because you woke up with fire abilities? Or even worse. We’re pretty sure that at least two murder cases we’ve found were actually powers-related accidents.”

“Maybe you should start running PSAs,” Clint suggests, only half-joking. “‘Do you have powers you can’t control? Are you frightened for your loved ones? There is help! Call 1-800-4-SHIELD.’”

“You laugh, but we’re monitoring crisis hotlines,” Phil says. “911, all the usual channels. There’s only so many of us, though, and we’re spread thin.” 

“I wish we could do more,” Clint sighs. “We’re under a lot of scrutiny since Sokovia, though. There’s talk of UN oversight, because _that_ worked so well the last time.”

“I don’t suppose they’d accept ‘Captain America’s conscience’ as a guiding principle.”

“Well, you know. America. Shine’s gone off since World War II. Plus, honestly, they’re better off working with Tony; once Cap gets an idea into his head, there’s no budging him. Tony grew up in the shark tank, he understands how to play the long game.”

“I never thought I’d see the day that Tony Stark was leading any sort of diplomatic negotiation.”

“More like Tony, Pepper, and a pack of lawyers, but yeah.”  Clint scratches his scalp. “Things are getting pretty tense.”

“We’ve all got our parts to play,” Phil says. He sighs a little, shaking his head. “Remember when we first started working together and we were just worried about regular humans?”

“Cartels and conspiracies and old-fashioned gun-runners,” Clint says. “None of this alien shit. Good times.” He looks over at Phil, who is staring out the window pensively. For all that they’ve been talking about disturbing topics, it’s good to be doing it, good to see that they can still function as a team as well as they ever had. “I gotta say, though,” Clint says. “Alien shit ain’t all bad. It saved Daisy, from what I hear. It saved you.” He clears his throat. “I’m real glad about that part.”

“You know, even after everything, so am I.”

They smile at each other, a soft, comfortable quiet between them; hard-won, Clint thinks, and valued all the more for it. They spend the rest of the drive making plans, and by the time Sabine drops them off in front of a nondescript storefront on a nondescript street, Clint feels like he’s gone back in time. He half expects to hear a SHIELD check-tone coming through his earpiece; it’s actually a little startling when it’s Sabine’s cool accent instead.

“I’ll circle the block while you’re inside,” she says. “The Director doesn’t have an earpiece in, but he is carrying a panic button that will alert both of us as well as FRIDAY and the Avengers.”

Clint grins. “That’s good to hear,” he says. “Thanks, Sabine.” He cuts the audio, then makes a face at Phil. “You could have mentioned the panic button earlier.”

Phil raises an eyebrow. “Would that have made a difference?”

Clint shrugs. “I’d have still come with you, but I’d have been less pissed off that you were endangering yourself.”

“My mistake.” The corner of Phil’s mouth turns up, rueful and wry, and Clint nudges him companionably with his elbow.

“Come on, let’s go be spies.”

There’s a real, physical bell on the door of the shop that tinkles when they enter, tinny and off-key. The place looks terrible, but also kind of awesome; for all that it’s supposed to be a jewelry repair shop, Clint doesn’t see anything remotely jewelry-like. He thinks at first that they came in the wrong door, and actually backs up a step to check; it looks and smells like a junk shop, maybe an antique store if you’re being kind. The walls are lined with shelves, and the shelves are lined with… _stuff;_ commemorative figurines, novelty clocks, bowling trophies, bottle caps. There’s a glass case just inside the entrance full of more stuff, and on top of it is is still more. Beyond, it takes Clint a minute to detect the form of an old man, half-hidden by a pile of what looks like old encyclopedias, stooped over a blowtorch. There’s an old Boy Scout uniform hanging off the back of his chair and what Clint thinks is big band music playing through a crackly old radio. 

The old man says something without turning around; Clint can’t quite make it out over the noise of the blowtorch and the music, but he assumes it’s some kind of greeting.

“Take your time,” Phil tells him, his voice pitched to carry.

The man—Robert Engalls, surely—pulls back from his blowtorch and turns around. He’s wearing a magnifier over his eyes and a thick, stained apron over his clothes. He’s got a pair of tongs in one hand, clutching a gold ring that is glowing with heat.

“Phil!” he exclaims, his face folding up like an accordion as he smiles. It’s a little easier for Clint to make out what he’s saying now that he’s at least facing them, but there’s something off about his lip movements—loose dentures, maybe—that makes him hard to read. Shit, this is going to be a pain in the ass. He tries to concentrate without letting his face get _too_ murderous.

“You old (son of a bitch?),” Engalls is saying, “where have you been? I was beginning to think you’d got yourself killed at last.”

Phil doesn’t react, but the way his body locks still beside Clint is a tell, albeit one that Robert Engalls probably can’t see.

“Good to see you, too, Bob,” Phil says, his tone mild. 

“Eh, don’t be like that,” Engalls says. He shuts off the blowtorch and sets down his tools; Clint’s relieved. One touch of metal that hot and any of the paper piles would go up like kindling.

“It’s been a dramatic few years,” Phil says, his voice shading apologetic. “I’ve been out of touch. More than I should have been.”

Engalls grunts. “Happens often enough, these days. I knew you’d be back, though. I saved you something.” He moves to a glass display case that’s full of old die-cast trucks and opens the back of it. Clint tries to see what he’s rummaging around for, but a tall vase full of what appears to be watch batteries is blocking his view. Phil’s doing his Inoffensive Stand, hands loosely clasped in front of himself (Clint wonders if he’s trying to cover the prosthetic hand), but his eyes are sharp and a little gleeful.

Engalls says something Clint can’t decipher, and holds out a small, colorful item. Clint starts toward it—you don’t just take shit out of someone’s hand, jeez, Phil—but Phil cuts him off with a sharp gesture and the hint of an eye-roll.

“This one’s a little jumpy, eh?” Engalls chuckles. “Don’t worry, lad, I’m not going to hurt him. Just a little (talon? token?) between old friends.”

Phil takes the object—it’s a tin box, Clint sees, red, white, and blue under the rust spots. “Bob,” he breathes, and his face lights up; Clint is absolutely not in the least jealous. “Is this what I think it is?”

“Open it and see,” Engalls says, grinning. 

Phil places the box carefully in the palm of his prosthetic hand, grasping the base stiffly with the leather-wrapped fingers, and opens the lid with his other hand. It squeaks, and showers little flakes of rust onto Phil’s glove, but from the look on Phil’s face it apparently has, like, a big-ass diamond in it, or the keys to a vintage car, or—

“It’s the 1956 Captain America’s Junior Army anniversary pin and trading card set,” Phil breathes. “With the collector’s tin and everything! Bob, you shouldn’t have.” 

“Nobody else would appreciate it properly,” Engalls sniffs, and of course, leave it to Phil to have a secret informant who’s as big a Cap nerd as he is. “Kids these days, they don’t care for a thing unless it beeps or goes on the internet. No, when that came into my hands, young man, I knew who it was for.”

Phil beams at him. “I’ve been looking for one of these for years. I have one of the pins, but the complete sets are really hard to find, even in moderate condition.” He closes the lid tenderly and pulls out his hanky, wrapping it around the little box before tucking it into his breast pocket. “I can give you three hundred cash, or if you don’t mind a check—”

“Bah, keep your money,” Engalls says, waving his hand dismissively. “You’ve brought me enough business, over the years. Which, speaking of, what brings you back to my shop? Ring sizing, maybe? Engraving?”

“I’m interested in some custom work,” Phil tells him.

“Hmm, good. Nice to have something interesting to do.” He crosses to the shop door, flips over the sign to “closed”, and turns the bolt. “Come on back to the (consultation?) room.”

They follow him into the shop’s back room, which is, if anything, even more cluttered than the front one. Engalls settles into a saggy blue armchair, waving Clint and Phil to an aggressively-stuffed loveseat opposite, which was not constructed to hold two men with their breadth of shoulder. Clint makes sure to take the left side, so as to leave Phil’s good hand with the widest range of motion, especially since they end up wedged together into the seat. Clint bristles at the positioning—the sightlines and range of motion are terrible, if there were to be an attack—but as Phil and Engalls talk intelligence and nerdery in roughly equal measure, he starts to feel a little reconciled to the situation, even as he starts to get a headache from concentrating on their speech. Phil’s body heat, gradually seeping through their clothes as they sit in the over-warm room, is reassuring against Clint’s side, and Sabine occasionally makes tart little observations in his earpiece about the idiot drivers she has to put up with, refreshing in their crisp clarity. 

By the time they stand to leave, he’s got a knot of pain between his eyes, but he’s relaxed enough about the safety of the situation that he lets Phil shake Engalls’ hand without even giving him the “don’t even think about trying any funny business” stink-eye. Natasha would despair.

He sends the extraction signal to Sabine while Phil is promising not to be a stranger, no really, come by anytime, there’s not enough custom work anymore. By the time they step out onto the pavement in front of the shop, the car is waiting for them. Seeing his friend seems to have done Phil some good; he’s a lot less tetchy than he started out, and even permits Clint to open his door and stand between him and possible snipers while he gets in the car.

The door closes behind Clint with a satisfying thunk that speaks of fine construction, bulletproofing, and sound insulation. Nothing like a Stark car for espionage. The interior of the car is blessedly quiet, the silence falling like a blanket over Clint’s beleaguered ears, and he takes a moment to lean his head back against the seat and just breathe and not try to understand anything as Sabine pulls smoothly back into traffic. Once he feels a little less like his teeth are going to rattle out of his skull, Clint looks over at Phil, who has taken the tin box back out of his pocket and is brooding over it lovingly.

“‘If you’ll take a check,’ Phil, seriously?” he says. “What the fuck name do you have a _checking account_ under?”

“Phillip Coldman,” Phil replies immediately. “Marcus Nickleby. Jean-Phillippe du Castille. I’d have probably used the Phil Stevenson account for that, though; he’s mostly for purchasing. I’ve built up something of a reputation in collector circles with him.”

Clint blinks. “How did I not know you have an entire cover for buying collectibles? Because I feel like I should have known this.”

Phil shrugs, clearing his throat. “I, uh, I’ve always tried to keep some things separate from work,” he says. “It was irrelevant at best, dangerous at worst. You know how it is.”

Clint does know; the more of your idiosyncrasies are known, the more hobbies and interests and personal connections, the easier it is for them to catch you, break your codes, falsify your messages. He’s not sure whether he’s more stung that Phil had kept this a secret from him before or happy that Phil’s told him now.

“If you wouldn’t mind, I’d prefer it if this stayed between us,” Phil says. “I have enough to deal with without Stark trying to snipe me on eBay.”

Clint makes himself smile, though he can tell it isn’t his best effort. “Your secrets are safe with me, boss.”

“I know,” Phil says, more seriously than the conversation really warrants. “They always have been. Thank you.” He shoots Clint a considering look. “Are you okay?” he asks, hesitant. “You look…” he gestures at Clint’s face.

Clint sighs. “Sorry,” he says. “Headache. No big deal, it’ll pass.”

“Ah.” Phil’s mouth twists unhappily. “You want something for it? I’m pretty sure Stark’s got this car stocked.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Clint says, and he forces himself not to help as Phil fumbles in the little built-in cooler and pulls out a fancy-ass water and a bottle of Advil. He takes four and drinks half the water under Phil’s watchful eye. Clint’s a little disgruntled with the whole situation; he’d gotten spoiled by being around the Tower so much lately and had forgotten how much harder it was to navigate a mission without FRIDAY around. Next time, Nat should probably be Phil’s backup; Clint’s better saved for the times when they need something shot.

They don’t talk much for the rest of the ride; Clint spends it mostly with his eyes closed waiting for his headache to subside. Still, though, it’s nice to have Phil next to him, companionable and supportive and right there where Clint can know he’s okay. He feels a little queasy at the thought of losing this, at not being able to go in the field with Phil anymore, but he needs to get real; an operative who’s only effective in Avengers Tower or within 500 feet of Iron Man is not a good choice for undercover. It was okay this time, but they probably shouldn’t do this again.

Now that he’s acknowledged to himself that this should be the last time they work together like this, Clint doesn’t want it to end. Even driving from Queens to Manhattan at rush hour doesn’t _literally_ take forever, though, so they eventually get back to the Tower and Clint has to go get ready for the dinner that he promised Kate he’d meet her for (and which she has texted him about five times already today.) He thinks about cancelling for about ten seconds, but he’s not that kind of a douchebag, especially since he’s pretty sure Kate came home early because she could tell he was having a hard time. Still, though, he finds himself reluctant to leave Phil. 

They’re friends, right? They both want to be friends. Normal friends do stuff besides missions together. And breakfast that morning had been nice. Comfortable. Maybe they could try that again?

“So, hey,” he says, as they wait for the elevator. “Wanna grab breakfast tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Phil says. “That’d be nice.”

Success! Clint is great at friends. “I’ll swing by,” he tells Phil. “There’s a place around the corner that makes breakfast sandwiches out of donuts, you’ll love it.”

Phil smiles. “Of that,” he says, sincerely, “I have no doubt.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, a million thanks to everyone who is reading and especially to those who have left feedback. I so appreciate your enthusiasm!!
> 
> Chapter 6, "Safety," will be posted on or about next Sunday, March 13.


	6. Safety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint has sushi, breakfast, and an epiphany.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A million thanks to Kathar for forcing me to do the hard work on Clint's feelings. And a million thanks to you, dear readers, for your encouragement and feedback! Two exclamation points and a smiley face emoji to you all.

Fortunately, Clint’s headache is mostly gone by the time he has to leave to meet Kate. He feels a little like a poser, but he gets one of the SI drivers to take him instead of taking the train; it gives him some additional time to sit in a quiet space, with no noise or bright lights or other people, and  prepare himself to face the restaurant. He gets the driver to let him off a couple blocks down and walks the rest of the way, letting the cool evening breeze perk him up.

They’re already at the restaurant when Clint gets there; Kate has secured one of the patio tables. Lucky’s leash is looped around the railing, and Lucky is curled up outside it, where he is technically not in any food service area. When he sees Clint, he jumps up and starts barking excitedly, pulling at his collar in his eagerness. Clint breaks into a jog and hurries over to him, going down on his knees on the sidewalk so that Lucky can jump up and lick his face, front paws slung over Clint’s shoulders, his whole body swaying with the force of his wagging tail.

Clint shuts his eyes and pinches his mouth closed and just lets himself be slobbered on, wrapping both arms around Lucky’s body.

“Hey, Luck,” he says, “hey, good boy. Good boy, Lucky, I missed you too.” 

When Lucky’s finally satisfied with his greeting and Clint can convince him to sit back down, he looks up to see Kate watching them, smiling. She’s wearing a little purple sundress and a big floppy hat with a purple ribbon, and he sees now that Lucky has a matching purple ribbon on his collar.

“Hey, Hawkeye,” he says.

“Hawkeye.” She nods at him, eyes twinkling. “I’ve got you a seat, but you should probably wash your hands first. And also your face.”

She’s got a point, so he runs inside and cleans up before joining her at the table.

“I already ordered for us,” she says, when he gets back to the table. “You always get the same thing here, so.”

“Thanks,” he tells her, settling in.

They catch up over edamame and green tea and gyoza. Kate tells him about the road trip back from the beach, and the putrid dead rat that Lucky rolled in when they got back to the city, thus necessitating his trip to the doggie spa and his current beribboned state. 

“What about you?” she asks. “You seem like you’re feeling better than you were the other day.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, poking at an edamame pod with his chopstick. “Phil and I, uh, we talked some. Worked some things out. We’ve been hanging out a little, the last couple days. Breakfast, you know. _Dog Cops_. It’s been good. We even went on a mission today.”

Kate perks up. “What kind of mission?”

Clint tells her about his trip out to Queens with Phil. Afterward, as their main courses arrive and they start eating, he naturally transitions into telling stories about some of their less-classified Delta missions with Phil, and then to some of the best Agent Coulson stories that used to get passed around the Ops Academy, not that Clint ever had anything to do with spreading rumors among young and impressionable trainees. He finally winds down with the one about the robbers and the bag of flour, though it loses a certain something without the pirated security camera footage.

Kate eyes Clint over the rim of her teacup, then sets it down so he can see her mouth. “You seem really excited about having breakfast with this guy tomorrow,” she says.

“It’s just… breakfast, you know?” Clint says. He waves his chopsticks—still holding a piece of sushi—around expansively, scattering tiny red fish eggs on the table. On the other side of the railing, Lucky sits up, woofing hopefully. Clint sticks his hand through the bars to give his ears a scritch.

“…It’s the most important meal of the day?” Kate looks skeptical. “I think that was just a slogan of the milk lobby.”

He eats the sushi, relishing the way the masago pops salty between his teeth. “No, I mean yes, but not that way. It’s just, lunch, right, and dinner, they’re kind of public, you know? Or brunch, you always go out to brunch, you meet people for brunch.” Since living at the Tower, he’s learned a lot about brunch. “But breakfast is, like, personal. You eat it at your house, mostly, just with people you know really well.”

“It’s intimate, you mean.” Kate grins wickedly at him, jabbing at him with her chopsticks. “Clint Barton! You’re not having _breakfast_ with this guy, you’re having—” she waggles her eyebrows— “ _sexy breakfast_.”

“What? No! I mean—no!” Clint drops a chopstick with a clatter, earning a glare from the hipster the next table over. “No, it’s not like that. We’re _friends_ , Kate.”

“Two breakfasts plus Netflix and chill over the course of three days? That spells more than friends, Clint. Friends with benefits at the _very_ least.” She puts a funky-looking orange roll on his plate. “Try the sea urchin, it’s amazing. It tastes like (kissing… something?).”

“Sorry, what?”

“Like _kissing_ a _mermaid,_ ” she repeats, raising her voice a little and over-enunciating.

Clint pokes at it suspiciously with his recovered chopstick. “I’m afraid to ask how you know that.”

“I’ve been to a _lot_ of dimensions in the past year.” She’s trying to look worldly-wise, but there’s glee seeping in around the corners, the way there always is when she talks about her friend with the trans-dimensional right cross.

“ _Speaking_ of friends with benefits,” he says.

“Don’t try to deflect, I’m wise to your tricks,” she tells him. “Plus, unlike some Hawkeyes currently sitting at this table, I’m not deluding myself about my level of interest in the contents of my friends’ pants.”

“Wait, you’re not? Did you finally get together?”

“That’s old news, Clint, don’t you ever read your email?” She steals a piece of shrimp tempura off his plate. 

“Whatever happened to, ‘OMG, Clint, I’m like the only straight person I know’? Because I’m pretty sure that’s a conversation we’ve had.”

She goes a little pink. “Yeah, turns out? Not so much.” 

“Congrats,” he tells her, only teasing a little. “Welcome to the elite world of the bisexual superhero archer. Club meetings are every fifth Tuesday.”

She snorts. “Yeah, yeah,” she says, waving her shrimp tail at him dismissively. “We’ll talk about that later. Right now we’re talking about you. What are you wearing to your date tomorrow?”

“It’s _not a date_ , so I’m wearing normal clothes,” Clint says. He sighs. “Look, I know it maybe looks that way from the outside, but you gotta understand, things were different in SHIELD. When you were on a mission, things could go to shit at any time. Phil and I, we went on a lot of missions together, you know? Sometimes we’d eat together at base camp in the morning, and that was the last calm moment we got. And now that we can’t really do missions anymore,” he waves at his ears, “I thought maybe we could at least do breakfast, you know? Like, that could be kind of our thing.”

“You want _his_ thing,” Kate says. “And when I say thing, I mean penis. I bet he’s hung,” she muses, dipping a piece of fatty tuna into her low-sodium soy sauce. “You talk about him like he’s hung.”

Clint chokes on a piece of ginger. “God, don’t _say_ things like that, you’re like twelve. And also _wrong_.”

“He’s _not_ hung?”

“No, he is, I mean—no! Stop! Argh!” She’s just flat-out laughing at him now, outright cackling despite the hipster glares it’s drawing. “That is beside the point! Which is that he’s my friend, and I thought he was dead and he’s not, and you just don’t get chances like that every day, you know?”

She sobers at that, eyes soft. “Yeah, Clint,” she tells him, laying a gentle hand on his wrist. “Yeah. I know.”

She has mercy on him, after that, and allows him to turn the conversation to her new girlfriend and their adventures. She looks happy, he thinks, a kind of strain gone from around her edges. She’s more settled into herself than she had been a year ago, and it does him good to see it. It’s also restful to talk to her, even though he doesn’t have FRIDAY to help, and restaurants are always terrible, and sitting on the patio by the street just makes it worse. Kate always remembers to look at him when she talks, never mumbles or puts her hand over her mouth; she makes her words a little slower, a little more clear. He’s teased her a bit about getting use out of her fancy elocution lessons, but he loves it, really; it feels good, to know she tries so hard. It feels like family.

When they’re finally finished plowing through their mountain of Japanese food, she even lets him pay. Outside, he kneels down for a while to let Lucky slobber on him some more, burying his face in warm, soft fur. Lucky smells like bubble gum, all fluffed out from the doggie spa, and he licks Clint all over, again, wagging his tail so hard his whole body moves. When Clint finally gets back up and hands Kate the leash, she leans into his side. He slings his arm around her shoulder and squeezes. She stays in the hug for a minute, then moves away, enough that he can see her face.

“You’re a good person, Clint, okay?” Kate says. “You piss me off sometimes, but you are. I know that things have been pretty shitty for you, and I just want… I want you to be happy. You deserve to be happy.” 

“Kate,” he says, helplessly. “I—”

“Shh, I’m talking,” she tells him. “Look, just—the things I said? I’m not the only one who feels that way. The Avengers do. The Black Widow does. And I bet you anything your special breakfast friend does too, okay? So just… don’t cut yourself off from good shit because you’ve got some kind of complex or whatever.” She sniffles a little, then pulls away, elbowing him in the kidney. “And tell him that if he hurts you again, I can come through a dimensional portal and kick his ass.”

“I appreciate the thought,” he says. “Hopefully we’re done hurting each other for a while, though.”

“Just say the word,” she promises. “Portal. Asskicking. I’m totally good for it.”

“Go home, Katie-Kate,” he tells her, laughing.

She’s wrong about Phil, of course, but it’s nice to know she cares.

Riding the train home, he texts her.

_Bring America next time I wanna meet her_

The phone pings back almost immediately.

_Dude you met her already, remember? The one who flies?_

_I met your teammate already,_ he sends back. _I wanna meet your gf._

She sends back a smiley face emoji, and then the two girls and a heart one. _OK, then you have to bring Mr. Sexy Breakfast._

_Not a date,_ he sends back.

_Suuuuuuuuure it’s not._ Her last text is followed, in rapid succession, by a string of emojis: a bow and arrow, a shirt and tie, a frying pan with an egg in it, two guys with a heart, kiss lips, an eggplant, a peach, an arrow in the bullseye of a target, the party noisemaker thing, and a thumbs-up. He’s pretty sure she means something about “sexy breakfast” but he’s got no idea what the eggplant has to do with it.

_You r so weird,_ he sends back.

She doesn’t reply until he’s almost home, and when she does, it’s just the emoji wearing sunglasses.

Kids these days.

He checks Phil’s schedule when he gets home. He’s free until ten the next day, so Clint figures he’ll swing by just before eight. He’s asleep almost as soon as he sets his alarm, and wakes up in a good mood for once. 

As he starts to pull his hearing aids out of the dehumidifier, he pauses. He’s going to be out of the Tower, in a space that he knows from experience is noisy and full of echoes, and he wants to actually be able to talk to Phil. Plus, well. He knows that Nat told Phil the bare bones of what went down in Brooklyn, but he doesn’t know if Phil really understands; he’s only seen Clint either working in the Tower or playing dumb muscle on an op. He doesn’t know how things are for Clint normally. How different they are.

Clint pulls out the field aids instead. They’re sleek and elegant like everything Tony makes, but they were definitely designed for function, not subtlety. They’re painted like a sports car, deep purplish-red to match Clint’s field gear, the sensors and processing arrays packed into the casings that curve around his ears. He’s always felt kind of cool when he wears them, a little like a really stylish Borg, but today he’s nervous. It’s not that he thinks Phil will react badly, it’s just… it’s one more thing that’s different, glaring evidence of why things can never go back to the way they were. Like Phil’s hand, but maybe even more so; there’s really not a technological equivalent of laser fingers that Tony can put into a hearing aid to make it give Clint advantages on missions. The best they can do is get him back in the field, less effective but not completely pointless.

Enough. Clint pushes his worries away; this isn’t the time to think like that. He slips the aids in, not bothering with the adhesive he’d wear if he were in the field, and picks up the external processing unit. It’s about the size of a deck of cards, but not as thick. There’s an armored pocket for it in his field suit, but he has several other ways to carry it, various belts and straps that are meant to look like cell phone holsters or those armbands joggers wear their phones in. He could just carry it in a pocket, but he’s a little too paranoid for that; it’s not like he could just pick another one up at a Radio Shack if he lost it. He finally settles on a wide belt that has a hidden compartment for the processor on the back side, and calls it good for the day. 

He makes it down to Phil’s rooms by ten till, and rings the chime as a courtesy before going in.

“Hey, it’s me,” he calls, as soon as he’s inside.

“I’m not quite ready yet,” Phil calls back. “You can come in, if you want.”

Clint wanders through the main area of the apartment and into Phil’s bedroom. Phil’s standing in front of the long double sink in the master bath, wearing slacks and socks and a tank-style undershirt, peering at himself in the long mirror. His shoulders are freckled, and Clint wonders idly when he's had a chance to be out in the sun lately.

“Good morning,” Phil says, smiling. His eyes dart to Clint’s ears, but he doesn’t say anything about the aids. “Sorry, I was a little late getting started today.”

Clint shrugs. “No worries, we got plenty of time,” he says, then he realizes what he’s seeing. “Hey, wait, what are you doing?”

Phil blinks at him over the electric shaver he’d just raised to his cheek. “Shaving,” he says.

“With that thing?” Clint waves his arm at the shaver.  “You’ll be itchy by lunch. What—oh.” He barely resists the urge to smack himself in the face. _Hand_ , Barton. “Shit.”

“Yeah,” Phil agrees. “I was hoping I’d be good enough with the new hand to use a real razor by now, but it’s still got that twitch problem, so…”

“Yeah, cutting your throat’s the last thing you need. I’m sorry, Phil, I know you hate those things.” He frowns, an idea dawning. “I, uh, I could help, if you wanted. So you don’t have to come back and touch up four times today. Don’t deny it, I know you.”

Phil smiles a little, acknowledging. “If you’re sure you don’t mind, I’d appreciate it,” he says. “I admit, I’ve missed being able to get a proper shave.”

“Tony does have a barber,” Clint says, pulling Phil’s shaving kit over from the corner of the counter. The worn leather is supple beneath his fingers as he pulls out Phil’s razor and extra blades, his mug and brush and the little tub of fancy shaving cream. This kit was Phil’s dad’s, Clint knows, maybe his granddad’s before that, and Phil only travels with it when he’s going somewhere safe. Clint smiles as he opens it, warmed by the thought. He likes to think that Phil feels safe around him, even after everything. Phil’s friendship was a safe space for Clint for so long, at times in his life when he really needed one. He’s happy to think that maybe he can be the same for Phil, now.

“I haven’t missed it enough to share grooming rituals with Stark,” Phil says. 

Clint laughs, pulling out some towels and starting the hot water going. He hoists himself up to sit on the counter between the sinks, his back to the mirror. “What, you don’t want to see what you’d look like with a goatee? It’d be like seeing your evil twin self.”

Phil raises an eyebrow. “I believe you are forgetting a certain incident in Halifax,” he points out.

“Oh, right,” Clint says, remembering the undercover op in question. There was a soul patch; it was horrifying. “Ugh, never mind, I retract my statement: no evil Coulson twins.” Phil grins, and Clint gives himself a mental pat on the back: another point in the win column for Clinton F. Barton, Amazing Friend.

C’mere,” he tells Phil, and pulls him over to stand between Clint’s knees. He runs a towel under the hot water and wrings it out, then drapes it around Phil’s face and neck, patting at the skin underneath. “Don’t let that fall,” he tells him, and Phil’s eyes crinkle at him from above the towel as he reaches up with his good hand to hold it in place.

While the damp heat softens Phil’s whiskers and opens up his pores, Clint sets Phil’s badger brush to soak in hot water and checks his razor. The heavy handle is polished and gleaming, the blade new and sharp; he sets it down close to hand. 

He puts a dollop of Phil’s shaving cream into the mug and flicks the excess water out of the brush, then uses it to stir up a thick lather. It’s the same stuff Phil has used as long as Clint has known him, and the familiar scent of sandalwood and bergamot makes Clint feel warm and settled.

Clint tugs the towel off and sets it in the other sink. “Okay, chin up,” he says, and uses the brush to swirl the hot lather all over Phil’s face and neck. Picking up the razor, he begins the shave. 

He’s always liked this, even though he doesn’t usually take the time to go all-out himself. Shaving with a safety razor is trendy these days, but when Clint was growing up, he and Barney did it because it was cheap. (Besides, a close shave really helped keep the stage makeup from breaking you out.) Phil’s razor is well-made, a pleasure to hold; the weight of the handle and the sharpness of the blade do most of the work, and all Clint has to do is guide it over Phil’s face and occasionally ask Phil to move a little to give him a better angle.

It’s quiet in the bathroom and warm from the steam. Clint takes his time, each pass of the razor an achievement in itself. He starts with Phil’s cheeks, getting used to the feel of doing this at a different angle before he moves to the trickier areas. He knows Phil would forgive Clint if he nicked him, but he’s determined that isn’t going to happen. Phil’s watching him; his eyes are bright and steady, very blue above the blanket of shaving foam, and they crinkle a little when Clint looks up.

If you’d asked him before, Clint would have said that he knew Phil’s face as well as his own. It’s different now, though; he’s focusing in on all the little dips and bumps of Phil’s features, and it seems like he’s seeing it for the first time. Phil’s mouth is the shape of a strung recurve, a gentle arch just tipped up at the corners. 

“Open up,” Clint says. Phil drops his jaw, wrapping his top lip down over his teeth, and Clint glides the razor along his top lip. He’s slow and light and careful as he works around Phil’s mouth, pulling the skin taut with his fingertips to reach into Phil’s smile lines, the valley beneath his bottom lip, to work around the scar on his chin from where he took a pipe to the face in Manilla. 

Phil tilts his head back without being asked when Clint moves to his neck. Clint traces over the square of his jawbone and the thin skin over his Adam’s apple, as careful and neat as he can. He can feel tiny pulses under his fingertips, the movement of Phil’s breath and his blood under the skin. Phil is relaxed, his eyes shut, not even watching in the mirror as Clint holds a blade to his throat. Clint aches at the evidence of trust.

Phil’s a hairy guy, so it takes several passes to get from silvery stubble to the close, clean shave Phil prefers, each time a fresh hot water rinse, a new lather. It’s meditative, almost like target practice; all his attention, his senses and his movements bent to the same end, breathing deep and slow.

He gives the razor a final rinse and sets it aside, clacking softly on the marble counter, then runs his fingers over Phil’s face to check for any stray hairs that need touching up. Phil’s skin is soft and smooth and flushed with heat, and Clint catches himself taking too long over his check, almost petting. He pulls his hand back, and re-wets the towel once more with fresh, hot water to rinse off Phil’s face for the last time.

“Just about done,” he says, reaching for Phil’s aftershave lotion. Phil could probably do this part himself, but Clint kind of wants to finish what he’s started, reluctant to let the moment of closeness end. He splashes the lotion onto his hands and pats it over Phil’s face, letting his fingers trace gentle circles around Phil’s cheeks and chin, over his Adam’s apple, around the curves of his mouth. Phil’s eyes flutter open and meet his, heavy-lidded and pleased; he looks drowsy and content, like a cat in a sunbeam. Everything is warm and quiet and cozy and beautiful. For the first time in weeks, Clint feels right, settled in his skin and comfortable with Phil, nothing jarring or jangling or out of place. 

_This is how it should be_ , Clint thinks. _I want to do this for him forever_.

He stops moving.

It’s a big thought, and he feels it run over him like gooseflesh, his skin tightening as he forgets to breathe for a minute. Things are connecting in his mind for the first time, click-click-click, bacon and donuts and shaving and ties and bodyguard duty and _Dog Cops_ night all slotting together into a shape, into a truth; like a fucking Lego castle in the shape of Phil Coulson that Clint never noticed he was building.

Forever. Phil. _Forever._

Phil’s eyes go from hazy to watchful, wary, and it hurts, it hurts to see that soft look go.

“Clint? Is everything okay?”

Okay isn’t really the word. Clint’s frozen, trying to process what he’s just realized; he might as well have a spinning hourglass behind his eyes. He takes a deliberate breath, trying to shake it off. That shit can wait. He promised Phil breakfast, after all.

“Sorry,” he says, pasting a grin onto his face and hoping it doesn’t look as phony as it feels. “Spaced out for a minute. Need to get some coffee in me.”

Phil smiles, his cheeks creasing beneath Clint’s hands which are—whoops—still resting on Phil’s face. Clint pulls them back, reluctantly. Has he already made things weird? He doesn’t even know anymore.

“I’ll finish getting ready, and then you can caffeinate,” Phil promises. He lays one hand on Clint’s knee, just a second’s brush of contact, then steps back into the bedroom. Clint’s thighs feel cold where they had just been pressed against Phil’s sides. 

“I’m gonna use the can,” Clint calls, and he’s proud of how normal his voice sounds. He ducks into the toilet room—which is, of course, palatial—shuts the door, turns on the fan, and slumps against the wall, sliding down to sit on the floor and bury his face between his upturned knees.

It’s not like it’s news to Clint that Phil is important to him. Phil’s always had a central place in Clint’s life; Clint had Nat on the one hand and Phil on the other, and that had been all he really needed as far as family went. Lovers came and went, sometimes with better results than others, but the two of them were always more important. Clint had been happy that way, content, even fulfilled; he would have been happy that way for… forever.

Then Phil had died, and Clint had come unmoored without him. He’d clung tighter than ever to Nat as they’d grieved, and after a while he’d even felt mostly okay again, but the space Phil had left had still fretted him like a missing tooth.

But then he’d learned Phil was alive.

Clint had thought—when he’d let himself think about it—that if he ever got Phil back, he would slot right back into place and things would go back to normal. He’d been wrong. Phil was different now— _Clint_ was different now—and they don’t fit the same way anymore. He’d been so angry over it: angry and afraid, he could see now. Jealous of Daisy, of Melinda, anyone who seemed to have taken Clint’s place. 

What he hadn’t noticed was the new space in his own heart, and while he’d been distracted, Phil had slipped right in.

How the fuck had he fallen in love and not _realized_ it?

He’s realized it now, though. Like seeing an optical illusion for the first time, a bunch of noise resolving into meaning. Two faces, a vase, an old woman, a young one; once seen, they can’t be unseen. Clint’s looked at Phil and _wanted_ , and he doesn’t know what to do.

He scrubs his hands over his face. Right now, he needs to take Phil to breakfast. Then, once he drops Phil off at his appointment, he can go somewhere and figure out what the fuck happens next.

He flushes the toilet and comes out to wash his hands. Phil’s leaning in the doorway, wearing one of his white dress shirts, open at the collar.

“You okay?” he asks, raising his voice a little to be heard over the running water. “We can reschedule if you—”

“No!” Clint blurts. “No, I’m fine, I mean. Just, never let a nineteen-year-old convince you to eat off a food truck.” 

Phil makes a sour face. “That’s a lesson I’ve learned all too well,” he says. “Skye no longer gets to pick the restaurant when we’re in the field.”

Clint bites back his first reaction, which is that nobody should be bickering over restaurants on missions with Phil except _him._ He just got done telling Kate all about how he and Phil need something new to do together because they can’t be mission partners anymore, right? They don’t have to be in the field to go eat, that’s the whole reason Clint’s here. He dries his hands.

“Well, I can promise that this breakfast will be delicious and free of digestive consequences,” he says. “Shall we?”

“Lead on.” 

Phil picks up a leather motorcycle jacket and shrugs it on, only struggling a little on the left side. It blends in with the gloves he uses to disguise the prosthetic, but it’s obviously his own; it’s broken in, draping over the curves of Phil’s shoulders and arms with buttery softness, and Clint wants to bury his nose in the collar and breathe in the mingled scents of leather and Phil.

He’s pretty sure he doesn’t show it. Phil doesn’t suddenly demand to know why Clint’s looking at him funny, anyway.

The morning is sunny but chilly; just as well, since it makes Phil’s jacket and gloves stand out less. Clint walks on on Phil’s left, so that each man’s dominant hand is free; when it’s the two of them, they’ve always walked that way. They haven’t always walked so close to each other that their shoulders brush, though. At least, Clint’s pretty sure he’d remember if they had. He likes the way it feels, but he isn’t _used_ to it.

He turns his head to say something and catches Phil looking at his hearing aids again. 

Phil looks away, quickly, hunching his shoulders a little. “Sorry,” he says. Clint can barely catch it over the road noise. His stomach tightens a little with nerves, but he’s also relieved; he’d far rather have the conversation and get it over than let it loom over them unspoken for much longer.

“Hey, Phil,” he says. “You can ask about it, you know. It’s fine, I don’t mind talking about it with you. Just, uh, you might have to speak up a little.” He waves a hand at the street, where a cabbie is in the middle of yelling out the window at a jaywalker.

“Of course,” Phil says, and Clint stiffens his spine in surprise, because it’s Phil’s field command voice, not really that much louder but clear and carrying, meant to be understood over a shitty radio in a monsoon if necessary. “I apologize.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Clint tells him. “And seriously, ask whatever; I mean it’s only fair, right? I’ve seen yours, I’ll show you mine.”

Phil starts to say something, then stops. “I haven’t seen you wearing those before,” he says at last.

“I wear these in the field,” Clint explains. “The ones I usually wear are linked to FRIDAY, so as long as I’m in the Tower she can be, like, an assistant? Like, if I’m talking to someone she’ll supplement the audio the aids pick up with the feed from her receivers, that kind of thing. Plus she keeps track of what I’m doing and filters the inputs accordingly. It’s pretty amazing, but it only works as long as I’m in range. Once I leave the Tower, they’re just regular hearing aids.”

“I… I hadn’t even noticed,” Phil says, stricken. “Clint, I’m so sorry, you must think I—”

“Hey, hey, no,” Clint interrupts. “Phil. They’re _meant_ to be unnoticeable. They’re tiny, and they fit right down inside my ears. You’d have had to be right up next to me looking down my ear canal with a flashlight to see them. Plus,” he shrugs, “it’s not like I couldn’t have brought it up myself. I just didn’t want to get into it while things were still…” he waves his hand in a vague gesture. “You know. Uncomfortable.”

“Still,” Phil says. “Natasha told me about your… injury. I should have been more considerate. I just didn’t realize—I thought it was more like, like Agent Ochoa after that car bomb in Tel Aviv.”

Clint nods. They’ve both known their share of agents who lost some amount of hearing; there were a lot of noise exposure hazards in their line of work. “Yeah, that’s understandable,” he says. “And just seeing me around the Tower, you wouldn’t be able to tell, but yeah, I’ve got severe loss in both ears. I can hear a little bit without the aids, but not enough to do me much good.”

“Are you considering learning to sign?” Phil’s got his mission-planning face on; Clint’s half surprised he hasn’t already ordered, like, ASL Rosetta Stone or something on his phone. It’s stupid, how good it makes Clint feel, how important. 

“I do, a little,” he says. “I dunno if Nat told you, but this happened to me before, when I was a kid.”

“I didn’t know,” Phil says, his voice a little quieter. 

“I didn’t tell people, at SHIELD. Didn’t think it was relevant, you know? Didn’t want people to think—“ he cuts himself off with a shake of his head. “Never mind. It was, uh, I think they call it traumatic hearing loss? My old man slammed me into a wall, hit my head just right… anyway, the school sent me to some special classes. Used to sign with my brother. But I got better, after a couple years, so I thought that was the end of it.”

“So when you were injured again…”

“Yeah. Apparently he got me right in the same place, but with the old damage…” he shrugs. “They won’t say it’s 100% permanent, but they aren’t comfortable telling me it’ll get better again, either.” 

“That must be hard,” Phil says. “The not knowing.”

“Yeah.” They walk in silence for a few steps. “I didn’t want to do anything at first, you know? Aids or sign or anything. I was in a bad way. But my brother, he actually helped. Wouldn’t let me give up. Reminded me who I was. Signed to me, made me communicate.”

“I’m glad,” Phil says, “that he was there to help you. I wish I—well. If wishes were horses, as they say.”

“You’re here now,” Clint tells him. “And Barney’s not. There’s a time for everything.”

“I took an ASL class in the Academy as part of my language requirement,” Phil says. At his side, the prosthetic hand flexes, fingers clenching and relaxing. “I’m pretty rusty, but it’d do me good to brush up on it. I mean, if you wanted someone to practice with. I could probably even convince Teresa it counted as OT homework.”

Clint chuckles. “I don’t even know if what I use is ASL,” he says. “It’s probably some combination of that and, like, little kid hand signals I made up with Barney, back in the day. I’ve been thinking I should take a class or something. FRIDAY’s probably got a webinar we could take.”

“Well, in a pinch we’ve at least got field signals.” 

“True.” Clint thinks of the videoconference that started everything, the signal he hadn’t been able to hold back. It had worked out pretty well, in the end. “And at least my vision’s good, that helps. I can get by pretty well between lipreading and the aids, most of the time.”

“You are Hawkeye, after all.” Phil smiles a little. “So, to go back to the hearing aids for a minute, how are these different from the other pair?”

“Shielded, for one thing. And they’ve got an external processor, bigger mics, more power. It can’t match what FRIDAY can do, but it’s better than anything else on the market, plus it’s got amazing compensation for sudden noises in case of, you know. Explosions. Hulks. Lightning strikes. That sort of thing.” 

Phil smiles a little. “So, how can I help you? When we’re talking, I mean.”

“If we’re in the Tower and I’ve got my aids in, you can pretty much just talk like normal,” Clint explains, and it’s so Phil, kind and thoughtful and practical, making sure his people have what they need. Clint’s missed him so much. “Otherwise, it helps if you keep your face turned to the light and make sure I can see your mouth when you’re talking. And, um,” he rubs the back of his neck, embarrassed. “I’m still a little out of practice with the lip reading? So please let me know if I stare at your mouth too hard, I know it creeps people out.”

“I’m sure that won’t be a problem, Clint,” Phil said. “And please, let me know if I’m making things difficult for you? I, ah, I want us to be able to talk to one another.”

Clint grins at him, bumping their shoulders affectionately. “Yeah, Phil,” he says. “Me, too.” Phil smiles back, and Clint sees the line of his shoulders ease under his jacket. 

The café is a few blocks away, tucked into the back corner of the lower floor of an office tower, where the hedge fund managers or whatever they were had to pass on their way from the parking garage to the main elevator bank. There’s a dry cleaner next to it and a shoe-shine stand opposite.

If you come earlier there’s always a line out the door, but Clint has timed their arrival to fall between the two morning rushes, and they’re able to snag one of the six tables.

“What’ll you have?” Clint asks. “I can order while you hold the table.”

“Surprise me,” Phil says, with a little smile. 

It’s silly, but Clint’s chest feels warm from Phil’s trust, even in something so small. “I’ve got you covered, boss,” he says, and Phil’s smile broadens.

“You always do.”

Clint doesn’t know what to say, so he makes some kind of gesture—he’s terrified it might have been finger guns, thanks a lot, Tony—and goes up to the counter. He gets them each a giant coffee and an order of hash brown fries, then gets his four favorite breakfast sandwiches, asking for them each to be cut into quarters. He doctors both coffees appropriately and takes them back to the table. It’s tiny, so small they have to tangle their feet together to both fit under it. Phil’s calves are solid and reassuring next to Clint’s. It feels good, sitting there. Clint wants to keep feeling this way. He wants all the breakfasts to be like this breakfast.

_Forever,_ his mind whispers, but Clint shuts that train of thought down. That’s for later. Right now is breakfast time.

Phil buries his face in his coffee, inhaling deeply before he takes the first sip and humming with pleasure. “This is really good,” he says happily. Clint notices that he waits until his cup is away from his mouth to speak, and feels all warm inside at the show of consideration. “You always find the best places.”

Clint finds his shoulders straightening, and he feels stupidly proud. Christ, has he always been this jazzed about making Phil happy? He thinks maybe he _has_. Is it possible to flunk therapy? Because Clint is way more backward in this whole self-knowledge thing than he’d previously thought.

The kid at the counter calls their number, and Clint reluctantly pulls his feet out from between Phil’s to go get their food. Phil’s eyes crinkle in amusement when Clint lays everything out, nearly taking up the whole table with the spread.

“Double bacon, egg and cheddar on a donut,” Clint says, unwrapping each sandwich as he goes. “Mozzarella and balsamic tomato jam with herbed eggs on foccacia, croque monsieur on a donut, and cider-glazed pork belly with apple-chipotle compote between griddled slices of bread pudding.”   

Phil’s eyes go wide. 

“Well, go ahead,” Clint tells him, nudging over one of the paper plates. He can’t wait for Phil to actually taste the food. “I got it all cut up, so just grab whatever appeals.”

Phil takes the plate and picks up a quarter of each of the sandwiches, assembling the pieces back together to make one frankensandwich. 

“Good idea,” Clint tells him, doing the same thing. “I can never pick a favorite.”

“I can see why.” Phil picks up the bacon, egg and cheese donut and takes a bite. Clint watches eagerly as a look of astonishment spreads over Phil’s face, and a little moan makes its way out of his throat, seemingly without Phil noticing. “Oh my god, _Clint_ ,” he says, as soon as he’s swallowed.

“Right?” Clint says. He can feel a smug grin taking over his face, a curl of satisfaction low in his belly, and he doesn’t even care. “Told ya.” 

Phil nods enthusiastically, his mouth full with his second bite; Clint leans back in his seat to watch him eat, letting his feet nudge farther between Phil’s. Clint can’t stop smiling as he watches; Phil is so transparently enjoying himself, eyes bright and pink along the cheekbones, making happy little noises every time he gets an particularly good bite, and the knowledge that it’s because of Clint—because of the things Clint picked out and bought and gave him—fills him with a warm glow. Sitting here, with his own amazing sandwich, and watching Phil; it’s a perfect moment. 

As he works his way through his breakfast, Phil is visibly relaxing, his shoulders squaring out, his gestures getting looser, broader. Clint hadn’t even consciously noticed how tight and small Phil had been holding himself since he came to the Tower. Now, he scoops up a chunk of bacon that fell out of his sandwich with his fingers, dignity be damned, and grins sheepishly at Clint when he catches his eye.

“How have I never heard of this place?” he asks. “I mean, I’d have thought the food bloggers would be all over something this good.”

Clint shrugs. “It’s crowded enough,” he says. “I guess maybe people don’t want it to get over-exposed; it’s not like there’s room for that many more people to eat here.”

“I’m surprised Stark doesn’t have them on retainer or something, given the food consumption patterns I’ve seen at the Tower.”

“Tony doesn’t know about this place, and don’t you tell him, either,” Clint says, pointing at Phil with a hash brown fry. “He’d have it moved into the Tower in a week, and then I wouldn’t have anywhere to go when I need some room to breathe.”

Phil’s face goes soft. “No, of course I won’t, Clint,” he says. “I didn’t realize—thank you for sharing your breakfast spot with me.”

“De nada.” Phil’s always done this to him, always caught him off-guard with sincerity even when Clint knows it’s Phil’s secret weapon. Phil’s always known when things were important, and always treated them accordingly. Clint’s beginning to think that he missed a lot about Phil, before. Maybe even that he _wanted_ to miss things, that he was afraid to let himself see.

He’s always known that Phil was handsome, that he was kind, that he was smart and brave and honorable. He’s always known that Phil believes in things: in justice and second chances, in SHIELD, in his people. He’s always known that Phil cares for him. And the more he thinks about it, the more he wonders whether Phil might… more than care. 

He thinks of the way Phil has acted toward him, since he came to the Tower and even before. He hadn’t wanted to come, at first, even after Steve talked to him; he’d been resisting all their points until Clint had—had asked for him. The things he’d said, where he knew Clint could hear him, about taking things on Clint’s terms. How patient he’d been when Clint was spying on him and leaving him half-eaten snacks. The way his face had lit with happiness when Clint came to him before his surgery. How he met every overture Clint made and returned it with interest.

He thinks maybe… maybe Phil might look at him and want… not _forever_ , he’s not needy the same way Clint is, but he might want _more_. When you look at it the right way, the evidence is there, after all. And even if not—even if Clint’s misinterpreting everything—Clint’s pretty sure Phil at least wouldn’t hold it against him. Not after they just got each other back.

He tries to picture what this morning would have been like, back at the Tower, if this breakfast had been… like Kate had said. He would have touched Phil more, he thinks. Well, maybe not _more_ , but differently. Maybe they’d have kissed; maybe Clint would have grabbed the front of Phil’s shirt and tugged him right up into the vee of Clint’s thighs and run his lips over Phil’s stubble, and then done it again, after, to make sure it was smooth. Maybe Phil would have leaned his weight against Clint’s chest, let Clint nose into the crook of his shoulder. Phil probably smelled really good there.

He looks up from his sandwich, realizing that he’s let the conversation lapse. When he meets Phil’s gaze, Phil smiles at him around a mouthful of croque monsieur and salutes him with a hash brown fry. He’s such a dork, sometimes, but that’s what makes him perfect. It’s what makes him seem like a real person you can know and… and love. Clint watches Phil’s hand, neat and careful fingers wrapping around his coffee, thinks of the calluses he knows are there. He wonders whether Phil would touch him, if Clint offered. He imagines that steady touch on his nipples, on his dick, and shivers.

Phil might be willing, once he knows it’s on offer. He’s slept with guys before, Clint knows, even if the few longer-term relationships Clint knows about were with women. And he and Clint are… friends, at the very least. Good friends. Clint thinks the odds are decent that Phil would be up to at least consider making things, well, sexual. Romantic, even. And then, if that goes well, maybe Clint can sell the case for more.

For now, though, they eat their way through a mountain of breakfast, and mock-tussle over the last piece of the pork belly sandwich. Clint lets Phil have it, of course, and then Phil cuts it in half and splits it between them anyway.

“Fair warning,” Clint tells him, with his mouth full. “I’m probably gonna hug you again later, so if that’s not okay, you know, tell me now.”

Phil’s eyebrows do something complicated. “Not at all,” he says evenly. “Please, feel free.”

They linger over the dregs of their coffee in comfortable silence until they need to leave. It’s warmer now, so Phil takes off his jacket, holding it slung over his left arm to hide the glove. They walk back to the Tower with their arms brushing, chatting aimlessly about which sandwiches they’ll try next time. Clint feels a happy little zing at the way Phil says “next time,” like it’s a given; see, Kate, breakfast _is_ going to be their thing. 

Well, okay. Maybe _sexy_ breakfast.

He rides with Phil up the elevator to the lab floor; he’s going to do that Mark II consult with Tony that got delayed by their little trip out to Queens. 

“Are you coming to the consult?” Phil asks, when Clint gets off the elevator with him instead of continuing up to the range or his own apartment.

“Not today,” Clint says. 

Phil stops walking, right before turning the corner that puts them in eyeshot of the glass wall of the prosthetic lab. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I just—c’mere,” Clint says, and opens his arms. He feels really stupid, but… he’s testing a hypothesis, here. He needs more information before he does anything he can’t take back.

Phil blinks, surprise blanking his face for a second, then steps right up into Clint’s arms, letting his forehead drop onto Clint’s shoulder. Clint tucks him in closer, squeezing a little; one thing he’s learned from Nat over the years is how to give a hug that makes a person damn well _feel_ hugged. Phil lets out a gusty sigh as his arms come up around Clint’s back in return. Phil’s cheek is like satin against Clint’s neck—Clint is _great_ at shaving—and his breath is warm and coffee-scented and a tiny bit shaky. Clint holds on until Phil’s breathing evens out and his back slumps a little under Clint’s hands, and then leans over, close.

“I’m so fucking happy you’re alive,” he says, his voice quiet; this is just for Phil, not anyone else, and FRIDAY’s always listening. “Thank you for coming back to me.”

Phil takes another unsteady breath, and the robot hand clenches against Clint’s shoulder. “Thank _you_ ,” he says, and Clint can tell that he’s turned his head to speak right into Clint’s ear. “For giving me another chance.”

Clint tightens his hold on Phil, pulling him closer so that they are plastered together from neck to hip, and rubs his hands slowly across Phil’s back, over the warm, smooth cotton of his shirt. He lets one hand drift lower, into the neat swoop of Phil’s spine just above his belt. His pinky finger grazes just beneath the waistband of his pants, and Phil shivers against him, drawing in a deep, startled breath. Clint turns his head so that Phil’s short-cropped hair tickles his lips, and inhales sandalwood and bergamot and spice.

“Phil,” he says, so quiet he can barely tell he’s talking. “I—”

Phil’s phone vibrates from his breast pocket; pressed together like they are, Clint can feel it clearly. He pulls back slowly; neither of them seem to want to let go, their arms sliding apart with reluctance. “Go, help Tony revolutionize biomechanics,” he tells Phil. “We’ll talk more later, okay?”

“Yeah,” Phil says. He shakes himself back to rights in a few deft motions, smoothing out his expression, but his eyes keep flicking to Clint’s face, wide and startled. “Yeah. I’d like—that would be good. Later.”

Clint watches as he rounds the corner, then retreats back to the elevator, where he lets the doors close and leans back against the mirrored wall, puffing out a sigh. Well, he thinks. Hypothesis… maybe not _totally_ confirmed, but definitely plausible. 

He replays the memory of how Phil had trembled at his touch, the cold rush of his breath across Clint’s throat.

Definitely _probable_. Mmm.

“Agent Barton?” FRIDAY asks, a minute or so later. “Did you want to use the elevator?”

“Sure,” Clint says. “My floor, please.” The elevator slides into motion.

“Director Coulson seems in good spirits this morning,” FRIDAY says into the silence.

“I didn’t know you monitor his mood,” Clint says.

“I monitor everyone’s mood,” she says. “It’s part of my PTSD response protocols. I have to have a baseline so that I can track any deviation that may require emergency assistance.”

“Huh,” Clint says. “I guess that’s true.” He’s not exactly sure how he feels about that, but when you have as many traumatized and deadly people living in one building as they do, he supposes it only makes sense.

“Director Coulson shows an average deviation of twenty-three percent mood elevation after spending time in your company,” FRIDAY offers.

“Oh yeah?” Clint grins. He should maybe feel a little bad about invading Phil’s privacy, except that he suspects Phil himself might have cleared FRIDAY to tell him things like this, like with the door and the security feeds. “What about me, what happens to my mood?”

“You oscillate,” she says, sounding put out. “It’s very untidy. However, the trend analysis does show a net positive effect.”

“That’s good, then,” he says, stepping out of the elevator on his floor. “Seeing as how I think we might start spending more time together soon.” He lets himself into his apartment, then pauses, remembering something. “FRIDAY? Can you give Director Coulson the same permissions to my place that Nat has?”

“Of course,” FRIDAY says. “Permissions updated.”  

“Thanks.” Clint heads back to his bedroom to swap out his field aids for the smaller, more comfortable pair. Once he’s got everything neatly stowed and charging, he goes back out to the living room and throws himself across his couch to think.

He wants something with Phil, that much is certain; something more than they ever had before. He thinks of hugging Phil earlier, of pulling Phil between his knees and touching his neck and his face, of tangling their feet together under a tiny table. He wants more of that, and more _than_ that. He wants _rights_ to Phil, wants to be allowed into Phil’s space and his life unquestioned. He wants everyone else to defer to him where Phil is concerned, for Daisy and Melinda and Tony and even Nat to have to ask for things that Clint’s allowed to just have. He wants first dibs on Phil’s attention and regard and, yes, hugs, but he also wants the right to be the one who takes care of Phil when he needs it. He wants to be the first call from Medical. He wants to fuss over Phil’s food and help him get dressed when his hand isn’t working and shave him and tie his ties. 

He wants Phil to tell him all about the things that happened while they were apart, the things he thought and did. He wants them to get drunk together and mourn for SHIELD, for the friends they lost to death or betrayal. He wants them to find ways to do good together again, to keep saving the world and each other.

He remembers a few nights before, when he’d sat on his couch alone and ached, restless and lonely. He imagines what it would be like if he could just install Phil in his home, where he could look after him properly. Phil could put his feet up on the coffee table and maybe he’d let Clint curl up with his head in Phil’s lap. Maybe Phil would rest his hand on Clint’s chest, a reassuring weight. Maybe he would play with Clint’s hair, or rub his stomach a little like Clint’s a puppy, rolling over for love. Clint would clear out the junk in his closet and make space for Phil’s suits. He wants to fall asleep with Phil and let Phil’s heartbeat give him peaceful dreams. He wants Tony to make them some kind of inductive nightstand that can charge his aids and Phil’s hand both at the same time.

He wants to touch Phil more, to draw out that little shiver again and chase it all the way down. He… he wants to kiss Phil, to learn his body, so that there isn’t a part of Phil where Clint isn’t welcome. He’s seen Phil with lovers, before, seen the way they always looked at him like a cat eyeing a saucer of cream, eyes gone dark and mouths tucked in a secret smile. Phil’s probably as good in bed as he is in combat; he’s always been noted for his adaptiveness and flexibility. He knows Clint, too. He sees Clint, he can always tell when Clint’s happy or angry or scared, even when he’s trying to cover it up. He knows the way Clint moves. Clint shudders, translating his memories of sparring with Phil into a softer, nakeder context, and his mouth goes dry.

Yeah. Clint wants that. He’s only surprised it never occurred to him to want it before.

He’s not sure how it all adds up, though, what he needs to ask Phil _for_ when they talk. Normally when he sees someone that he wants to fuck, he just makes a play; buys them a drink, or asks them for coffee or dinner, or whatever, and if it goes well that’s that. He wants so much more from Phil, though, that surely his normal approach is wrong. Phil’s too important for that. Clint wants—he’s not sure what he wants. He wants Phil to be his. He wants to be Phil’s. He wants them to come as a set and for nobody to question it.

Maybe he should just try to explain how he feels and get Phil to help him define it. Phil’s good at that sort of thing, after all, plus he likes to plan things. It gives him a secure baseline from which to make wild-ass improvisations. 

That’s it, then. Decision made. He’ll tell Phil, and then if Phil likes the idea he’ll help Clint figure everything out. And if Phil doesn’t—if he doesn’t want the things that Clint wants—

Clint takes a deep breath. There’s a part of him that’s wants to run, to back off and pull away and pretend it never happened, that he never woke up and saw this, because if Clint does this, if he puts all this out there, there’s no going back.

He reminds himself again of all the evidence he’s compiled since Phil came back, Phil’s words and eyes and body and actions all putting their checks in the column in favor of _more than friends_. You have to follow your evidence; if Clint’s learned one thing living with Tony, it’s that. And if Clint’s wrong, well… Clint isn’t thinking about that possibility. Time enough to deal with that if it happens. Tony’s probably got enough booze in the Tower to drown even that sorrow.

Clint pulls up Phil’s calendar, eager to move forward with his plan now that he’s made it. Phil’s down for nerve calibration, which is great; it means he’s plugged into the sensors, but Tony usually doesn’t stick around for the full cycle. The last few times, Phil’s passed the time by watching TV, helpfully projected for him by FRIDAY.

Clint’s in the elevator before he’s even finished the thought.

He barrels into the lab, and Phil looks away from an episode of _Hoarders_ , startled.

“Clint?”

Clint glances around, but the lab’s empty except for the two of them: good. “FRIDAY, can you cut the sound? Thanks.” He paces back and forth a few steps and turns, looking Phil square in the eyes. He looks rumpled and soft, his shirt sleeves rolled up and his collar open, eyes big and mouth a little slack with surprise. A flash of want runs through Clint, hot and sudden like a grease fire flaring from a pan, and his hands are tingling with how much he wants to walk over and straddle Phil in the chair, nudge his face into the bare hollow of Phil’s throat and suck until Phil moans and writhes. 

Yeah. There’s no going back from here.

“So, okay,” Clint says. His voice is higher that normal, fast and tight with nerves. “I’m just gonna say this. Phil, I know you know I care about you. A lot. And we’ve talked about the whole you-dying thing, and how pissed I was—”

“Clint,” Phil says, his voice soft and pained.

“No, that’s not this talk, we’ve had that talk. But you know, I couldn’t figure out why I was so angry, and also why I got so jealous of Daisy, which I know is stupid because she’s like ten—”

“Clint—”

“No, no, I know! But I was thinking about it, okay, and then Kate said some things, and I said she was wrong but I think now she wasn’t wrong? Or, well, only a little wrong, because it hasn’t happened yet but I want it to. I figured it out, you see? I _do_ want our breakfasts to be sexy breakfasts.”

Phil makes a funny, choked-off little noise, starting forward in the chair only to be yanked back by the cables attached to his arm. _“Clint—_ ”

“No, just, gimme a second, okay? You can talk in a minute.” Clint scrubs his hand through his hair, noticing distantly that it’s shaking. If he stops now, he’ll never manage to get up the courage to try it again, not now. “I have to get it out or I won’t say it right,” he says, more pleading than he meant to sound, and Phil  closes his mouth again, gives a tiny nod. 

“It’s not just sexy stuff,” Clint tells him. He can’t stay still any longer and starts pacing again, back and forth in front of Phil’s chair in a tight little circle. “I want to, to date you? Kinda? Only it’s more that I want us to have been dating for a long time already and, like, we’re together and everyone knows and I can do things for you. And—and we live together and we kiss and I can touch you whenever I want to.  And you, uh, you touch me too, because you want to—I want you to, because also I’m kind of in love with you? A lot. Did I say that yet? Because that part’s important.” He swallows hard, his gut roiling, and turns back to face Phil. 

“I was upset, before, because we didn’t fit the way we used to,” he says. “I was like, like a baby with one of those block puzzles, right, and I kept trying to put the round block through the triangle hole and it just kept not working and I got so mad, because I thought, I thought I’d lost it, lost you. And then it was like, like I looked over and I realized,” he gestures, waving his arms at the space next to himself like a game show host. “There’s another space on the board, Phil, we still fit together, just different now. But I want that. I want _us_. So, uh, that’s what I wanted to say. Okay, you can talk now.” He fidgets with his hands, waiting to hear Phil’s response. He’s breathing fast and his fingers and toes are cold, like his body’s hoarding all its blood in the center of him to cushion his hammering heart from whatever Phil’s about to say.

Phil looks like he just got smacked in the face with a ham (a situation that Clint has personally witnessed.) “Clint,” he says, and his voice has gone funny. “Did you just… propose to me? _In front of Tony Stark?_ ”

“…oh, shit,” Clint says. Holy fuck, Phil’s right; that’s exactly what Clint has done. He might be going to vomit, which would be a tragic waste of breakfast. His head is spinning. So much for the “try sex first and work up to more” plan. Fuck. Phil is going to—Phil is— “I guess maybe I did,” he says, trying to breathe. “Um. Sorry? Please don’t be—wait. _Tony?_ ”

“Hey, don’t mind me,” a muffled voice says, and then, oh god, Tony is climbing out from behind a monitor bank, a voltmeter in one hand and a multi-tool in the other.

“You know, I _was_ just going to keep quiet and pretend I wasn’t here,” Tony says. “But now that’s no longer a possibility, I have to say, Barton, you’ve got brass ones. I’d marry you if I were him.”

“You’re not helping,” Clint tells Tony. He’s maybe gonna pass out in a minute. He kind of hopes he does; it would be a mercy, at this point.

“Excuse you, I’m very helpful,” Tony says. “So, Phil, are you going to put Barton here out of his misery? He looks like he’s about to hurl.”

“I’m sorry,” Phil says, and Clint’s chest seizes; he’s ruined it, he’s ruined everything, he fucked it up and now Phil will—Phil won’t—Clint can’t hold back a tiny, hurt noise.

Phil turns back from Tony to Clint sharply. “I’m not saying no!” he says, good hand coming up in a negative gesture. “I’m not responding one way or the other right now. I just—I need a minute to re-examine the entire basis of our relationship, and also I would rather not have this conversation in front of a third party.”

“But now I’m invested,” Tony protests.

“Sorry, Tony,” Clint tells him. He’s not sure what to think, now. What does Phil mean, the entire basis of their relationship? Things are different now since Phil came back, sure, but what does that have to do with before?

“Could you unhook me please,” Phil says, in the level, ultra-calm, professional voice that Clint knows means he’s freaking out underneath. Shit.

Tony sighs. “Sure, make me wait to find out the ending,” he says, moving to decouple Phil from the nerve calibration rig. “It’s not like I’ve had to watch the whole thing play out in my own home for weeks. Oh, wait.”

“I’m sure you’ll hear the whole story soon enough,” Phil says. “Thank you.” He stands and looks at Clint, a helpless expression crossing his face. “Where should we—”

“I know a spot,” Clint says, his whole body jittering with nervous energy. “Come on. We’ll talk.”

He takes Phil to his second favorite TV lounge, because that way his first favorite won’t be ruined if things go badly and both of their apartments are unoccupied in case anyone has to flee and/or go cry in the shower or something.

“Privacy mode, please, FRIDAY,” he says, and FRIDAY sounds the little beep that means she’s turned her monitoring to emergency-only. He locks the door with his personal code, then stands awkwardly, wondering if he should sit down or stay by the door or what. Phil sits heavily on one of Tony’s leather-and-chrome sofas and looks at Clint. Clint doesn’t know what the expression on his face means, and that’s actually pretty upsetting to realize.

“Please just say it,” he blurts. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you in front of Tony, but please, don’t just sit there and look at me like that, just, just get it over with, okay?”

“Clint.” Phil’s voice is so, so gentle. “Stop. Come sit with me? Please?”

Clint sits, and tries to bear up under Phil’s searching look without dropping his eyes, even though he wants to. You don’t propose to a guy out of the blue and then get all shifty when he tries to figure out what’s going on. 

The few inches between them might as well be miles, and it hurts, feeling that distance when just a few hours before they’d been so close and warm. Clint thinks of his little fantasies of laying on the couch with his head on Phil’s lap, and bile rises bitter in his throat. Phil might have said he wasn’t saying no yet, but that was a far cry from saying yes, wasn’t it? Clint could see how this was going to go, how Phil would try to save his pride, to let him down easy. His eyes sting; he has to look away, but he keeps them open, staring into the middle distance, taking deep, even breaths. He’ll listen to whatever Phil has to say, and he won’t do a thing to make it harder on him. He owes Phil that, at least.

Finally, Phil takes a deep, steadying breath. “Clint,” he says, and his voice is so careful. Too careful. Clint barely holds back a flinch. “I care for you, very much. I think you know that.” 

Clint nods.

“I’d say that I don’t know how you figured it out, but—” Phil laughs, a little bitterly. “You are known for your perception, after all. I’m sure I was laughably obvious to you, and I appreciate very much that you never let on that you knew, before I—before.” He crosses his arms, defensive, and Clint realizes that in their hurry to leave the lab, Phil came away without his hand. It makes his stomach hurt.

“Phil—”

“Please, just let me say this,” Phil says, and Clint subsides, nodding. He had his chance to talk, after all. He concentrates on controlling his face, his breath.

“I’m not sure whether this is pity, or whether you’re just so glad I’m alive that you feel you should… reciprocate,” Phil says, picking his words like he’s walking through a minefield. “But please know, Clint, that no matter what I might want, I would never demand anything from you but your friendship. I can still be in your life the way I was, we can be important to each other, you don’t have to, to _give yourself_ to me somehow.”

Clint bites his lip, trying to keep his composure. Friendship, Phil had said friendship, he’s not going to leave forever. Clint hasn’t ruined everything. He was happy with Phil’s friendship before. He can make himself be happy with it again, he _can_. “It’s okay, Phil,” he says, forcing his voice to stay level. “I understand. You don’t—wait.” 

He runs back over what Phil just said, letting himself really think about the words rather than trying to brace himself against them. 

“Wait,” he says again. “Reciprocate?” There’s something swelling in his chest, a wild and rising joy. “You’re saying that it’s—that I’m—something you want?”

“Of course,” Phil says, looking startled, as though Clint had just expressed surprise that Cap’s uniform was red, white, and blue. Clint’s breath stutters.

“Phil,” he whispers, and he lets himself turn towards Phil at last.

Phil flinches a little at whatever he sees in Clint’s expression, his hand half-reaching out before he catches himself and pulls it back. 

“What?” It’s near a whisper of sound, though Phil’s lips clearly shape the word. “Clint,” Phil says, louder this time, looking closely at his face. “I thought… wait. Tell me again why you came to me just now? Please?”

“This morning,” Clint says, trying to put all his sincerity into his voice. “When you let me shave you—when you let me t-touch you, I realized. Everything I’d been trying to figure out, ever since you came back to me, it was this,” He reaches out and rests his hand on Phil’s bicep, just barely making contact before pulling back, not wanting to be pushy. “I want you. I want _everything_ with you. I just didn’t know what that meant. I thought if I told you, you could help me with that part.” He swallows. “Which, well, you pretty much have.”

“But why now?” Phil’s voice shakes. “We’ve known each other for so long, and you never even—is this because I died?”

“No!” Clint shakes his head, but then pauses, trying to be accurate. “I mean, kind of yes? But not in a bad way, it’s not like I want to, to make it up to you for dying or some shit.” He stops again, trying to gather the words to make Phil understand. “I think… for me, living without you for a while, it gave me the distance to see things clear. We don’t fit together the same way we used to, I know, but Phil, I think this could be even better.”

“I’ve been in love with you for almost a decade,” Phil says. His voice is trembling, small and lost, and Clint’s heart turns over; how can this be true? How can Phil have felt that way for so long and never let on, never let Clint see?

What else has Clint been missing, all this time? 

“And I knew, before, that you didn’t see me that way,” Phil continues. “You didn’t need that from me. You needed me to be your friend, and so I was. I put the rest away. But Clint, I can’t—I don’t think I’m strong enough to do it a second time. I know you think—I know you want this now, but if we do this—” and his voice breaks, and Clint wants to do something to _fix it._ “If we do this, Clint, it has to be for good. I’m sorry, I know it isn’t fair to you, but I can’t, I can’t have this and then lose it, I don’t have it in me anymore—”

“Yes,” Clint interrupts. “Phil, yes, I mean it. I know it seems really sudden and you probably don’t believe me but this is what I want. _You_ are what I want. For keeps, like you said, no take-backs. I know, I _know_ it must seem like I haven’t thought this through, but I’ve apparently been falling in love with you for ages and somehow never noticed and I don’t want to waste any more fucking time. I thought about, you know, asking you out on a date or whatever but it’s stupid, because we’ve _done_ all that. We _know_ each other, Phil. We love each other. More time wouldn’t change a thing.”

“You’re sure.” There’s the echo of a hundred other questions in Phil’s voice. _Do you have the shot?_ Clint can see Phil’s pulse hammering in his throat, giving the lie to his forced calm.

“Absolutely,” Clint says, trying to put everything he feels into his voice, his love and loneliness and certainty. Time stretches, pulling out like caramel, thick and golden. This, Clint knows, is the moment before everything changes.

“Then,” Phil says, and he presses his fingers to his lips. His eyes are glassy, and his hand is trembling. “God, I can’t believe I’m saying this—then, yes. Clint.” His voice breaks around Clint’s name. “Yes. To all of it.”

Clint barks out a sound, half laughter, half a sob. “Phil,” he says. “Fuck, I really need to kiss you right now, please can I—”

“Yes,” Phil says again. He reaches for Clint, touching his arm, his shoulder, drawing back after each touch like Clint’s skin might burn him if he lingers. “Yes, Clint, yes, anything you—”

Clint maybe needs to get checked for powers himself sometime, because he’s pretty sure he just teleported across the couch, straddling Phil’s lap with a knee on the cushions to either side of Phil’s hips, cradling Phil’s face in his hands. Phil goes silent, looking at Clint like he’s something amazing. Phil’s eyes are wet and bright and very blue. 

Clint licks his lips. Phil swallows, and Clint is mesmerized by the movement of his throat. It’s going to happen; it’s really going to happen. They’re going to do this. 

Clint leans forward, slowly. Phil meets him halfway, arching into Clint with a shaky little sigh that Clint feels down to his bones, but Clint doesn’t let himself hurry. He wants to draw it out, to stamp it on his mind. In the future, he’ll remember every bit of this, the way it felt to kiss Phil for the first time. He brushes Phil’s mouth with his closed lips until his own are tingling. When he’s aching for more, then he opens up a little, letting himself explore the shape of Phil’s lips, kiss the bow of the top one, draw the curve of the lower into his mouth and gently suck. Beneath him, he can feel Phil tremble, and all at once slow and gentle isn’t enough for him; he presses their bodies close and deepens the kiss, and Phil pushes up into it, into him, matching him strength for strength. Clint thinks one of them makes a needy little sound. He thinks it’s probably him.

Phil comes alive against him, coiled strength and heat and need; he grabs at Clint’s back, at his ass, arching his body into Clint’s. He moans breathlessly into the kiss, broken sounds that Clint can’t understand, but the tone of them is unmistakeable. Clint can feel his own pulse hammering beneath his skin; he’s winding up, gone sensitized all over like he’s just taken off a wetsuit, nipples stiffening and cock starting to fill. When he catches himself starting to hump against Phil’s belly, he pulls himself back, gasping. The air between them feels very cold.

“Holy shit,” he says, and Phil just nods. His lips are wet and flushed where Clint has been nibbling on them, and it takes all Clint’s considerable strength not to go right back to it.

“So this is where my plan to have this conversation in neutral territory kinda backfired,” Clint says, and then he has to dart back in and suck on Phil’s lower lip again, just for a minute, because it’s just _right there_ all tempting and kissable. Phil sucks in a sharp little breath through his nose that Clint wants to hear all the time forever. “I mean,” Clint murmurs, pulling back just enough to form the words, “I don’t mind doing this on a sofa, but technically this is a common area—” he skates his mouth along the line of Phil’s chin, reveling in the way Phil tips his head back to give him more room—“and I dunno ‘bout you, but I’m feeling like it might be a good idea to—” he comes to rest over Phil’s carotid pulse, up under the hinge of his jaw where the skin is thin, and traces over it with the tip of his tongue. “—to get some privacy.”

Phil groans, shivering beneath him, then grips Clint’s shoulder hard with his hand and pulls him up, just enough that he can meet Clint’s eyes. So Clint can see his lips, and his heart swells with love for this man.

“If we do not go somewhere where Tony Stark can’t walk in on us in the next ten minutes,” Phil says, and his voice is very serious but his eyes are wild. “I will not be responsible for my actions.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next few weeks are going to be busy, so Chapter 7, "Things You Dream of While You're Dead," should post on or around March 27.


	7. Things You Dream of While You’re Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint Barton wins at life, first time ever, film at eleven. (Private viewing only.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, this would not be what it was today without the amazing beta services of Kathar.

Between kisses, they decide to go to Clint’s apartment, because it’s a whole two floors closer as well as being stocked with…supplies. That’s fine with Clint; more than fine. He cleaned up for _Dog Cops_ night, after all, and there’s something about the thought of having Phil like this, all to himself in his space, maybe even in his bed, that makes him feel smug and triumphant inside. It’s like he’s won the lottery and the Heisman trophy and, shit, like the Nobel Prize or something. The Nobel Prize of getting lucky; Clint Barton wins at life, first time ever, film at eleven. (Private viewing only.)

Their progress toward privacy isn’t what you’d call speedy. First, Clint has to tear himself away from where he’s plastered against Phil’s body (and, not gonna lie, humping a little, rocking between pushing his dick into Phil’s belly and grinding down on the _really promising_ bulge under his ass) and actually stand back up. He’s cold all down his front, so he holds out a hand to Phil and heaves him to his feet, pulling him right back into Clint’s arms.

“Hey,” Clint says, nonsensically, and Phil smiles at him, sweet and a little doofy and unbelievably perfect.

“Hey,” he says back.

Clint kisses the crooked spot on the bridge of his nose. Then, since he’s so close to Phil’s mouth, he kinda drifts downward and stays for a while. Phil slumps into him, letting Clint take a good bit of his weight. It’s awesome.

Eventually, Clint remembers that they’re supposed to be going somewhere and raises his head from where he’s been nuzzling the soft space between Phil’s earlobe and his jawbone and making him shiver.

“Common area,” he gasps, and Phil makes a hilarious face that’s half pissiness and half arousal.

“Yes, fine, I know, I’m the one who keeps—” he dives in for another quick kiss, because he can, because Phil _wants_ him to, and Phil takes Clint’s bottom lip between his teeth and sucks on it, and they get distracted again for a minute—“holding us up. That one’s on you, though.”   

Phil smirks.“Lead on, then; I’m not stopping you.”

Clint grumbles a little, because it’s not like he can help himself, honestly, with Phil just right there like that. He manages to untangle them at least enough to walk to the door, though he’s keeping an arm slung around Phil’s waist, fingers tucked into his waistband like they’re teenagers at the fair. Phil draws back a little when they enter the hall, body language going tentative, and Clint eases up a bit, trying to give him some space. He knows that the whole constant-AI-surveillance part of living in the Tower takes some getting used to, and Phil’s always been a pretty private person.

“Hey, did you want to go back to the lab and pick up your hand?” he asks, when the elevator doors slide open.

“No, I—no,” Phil says. He’s frowning, and Clint has the visceral urge to do something about it. “I’d rather not run into Stark just now. Anyway, I don’t trust myself with it when I’m…”

“Horny?” Clint suggests, waggling his eyebrows, hoping to make Phil laugh.

“I was going to say, excited,” Phil says, but the lines in his forehead smooth out, so that’s okay then. 

“I can work with that,” Clint promises. “FRIDAY, my floor, please.” 

They’re still on DND, so she doesn’t say anything, but Clint imagines that her confirmation ping sounds happier than usual. He wonders what their mood curves will look like after today. Definitely a positive trend—for him, at any rate. 

Phil’s looking nervously at the reflective panels at the top of the elevator that hide FRIDAY’s sensors.

“Hey,” Clint tells him, tipping their heads closer together. “We’re still on DND, she’s passive monitoring only. Unless we give her a direct command or one of us has a heart attack or something, she’s not paying attention.”

Phil sighs, sagging back against the wall. “Right, sorry,” he says.

“Takes some getting used to,” Clint assures him. “I totally understand.” Ordinarily he’d hold Phil’s hand, but since he’s down to the one, he settles for standing on Phil’s bad side, curving an arm around his waist. Phil’s shoulders move in a sigh, and he leans against Clint until the doors slide open on Clint’s floor.

Clint waves down the hall to his apartment. “Go on, open the door,” he says. “I added you already.”

Phil shoots him another one of those bewildered little looks, and opens the door. Clint follows him inside, crowding close, because now that he’s had Phil pressed up against him all panting and eager, he’s in no hurry to let him back out of arm’s reach. Phil gets a few steps inside and then stops short, so fast that Clint walks into his back and jolts him forward a step. He reaches out to steady him. 

“Sorry,” Clint says, sheepish. Phil’s back heaves beneath his hand, the line of his body gone suddenly tight in what Clint doesn’t think is a good way. Clint moves around to Phil’s other side, so he can see his face, worried by the change. “Phil, you okay?”

“Sorry, I… it just hit me,” Phil says, and his voice is light, like it would blow away in a stiff breeze. “I don’t—” he reaches out with both arms, then flinches away when he sees the left one, the metal of the socket dark beneath his rolled-up sleeve. He swallows hard.

“Phil,” Clint says. He reaches out, tentative and careful, and brushes Phil’s fingers with his, reassured when Phil grabs his hand tight. “Whatever it is, it’s okay. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want.”

“That’s just it,” Phil says. His eyes are wide and dark, his forehead crumpled. “I don’t know if there _is_ anything I don’t want. I’ve thought—I’ve imagined myself here I don’t know how many times. I tried not to; I know it wasn’t fair. But I would think, sometimes. If things had been different, how it could have been. Being.. welcome. Wanted. Coming home with you…”

Phil’s voice wobbles, and Clint squeezes his hand hard. “You are welcome, Phil,” Clint says, trying to put all his messy and exuberant feelings about Phil into his voice. “I _do_ want you here. I promise you I do.”

“I—” Phil cuts himself off, mouth slanting unhappily. “I’m trying to believe that, I am.” He squeezes Clint’s hand in his turn. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, Clint. I know you wouldn’t lie to me. But you have to understand, I’ve spent so long training myself. You give so much of yourself to the people you care for. I was afraid that if I asked for too much…” He looks away, blinking hard, but even now keeps his head up so Clint can see him. “You needed me to be your friend, to love you as a friend, so I did that,” Phil continues, his voice rough. He looks up again, and his eyes are reddened, over-bright. “I trained myself… never look, never initiate a touch. Put everything away. I’m having some trouble… breaking the habit.”

Clint is maybe having an actual heart attack or something, his chest aches so. Phil looks and sounds so unlike himself, unsure, even while his fingers are clutching at Clint’s like they’re his only tether. Clint wants to help, to fix things, to make up for the years—so many years!—when he was unknowingly building this inside of Phil, making him think he wouldn’t be welcome. As if Phil hasn’t had a space carved out inside Clint’s heart forever.

Clint kind of wishes that Phil hadn’t been so careful, that he’d taken a chance. It feels so natural to love him, to want him; it feels right. He thinks that if Phil _had_ ever said something back then, Clint would have freaked out for a couple of days and then had the same realization. It’s not fair, though. Phil’d been the one with the most to lose; Clint couldn’t blame him for being unwilling to risk it. Besides, so many ridiculous, improbable things had to happen for them to reach this moment, gods and aliens and Hydra and superpowers. It’s like that thing Tony talks about sometimes, a butterfly flapping its wings causing a storm. If anything had been different, Clint might not have made it here. _Phil_ might not have made it here. 

They’re here now, though. And they’ll never know what might have been, and it isn’t relevant anyway; they can only go forward from here.

Time to slow this the hell down until Phil stops looking at Clint like he’s an unexploded bomb and some kind of mint-condition collectible both at once. 

“Phil,” he says. “I really want to hold you. Can I do that?”

“Please,” Phil whispers, and Clint pulls him in again. It’s only been three times in as many days, that he’s had Phil in his arms, and he can see himself getting addicted to the feeling. Phil likes to project as less than he is sometimes, to play bureaucrat; he’s an expert at seeming mild and overlooked until he’s got a fucking knife to your throat. Now, though, flush against his body, Clint can feel the truth of Phil, the solid curves of working muscle beneath his clothes. Phil folds up into Clint’s embrace, his head tucked down into Clint’s collarbone, his arms wrapped around his own middle, protective; Clint rests his face against Phil’s close-shorn hair and breathes him in and holds on, smoothing heavily up and down the tense line of Phil’s back.

“I want this,” he says quietly. He needs to reassure Phil that it’s true, needs him to understand that none of this is new, just newly discovered. Clint doesn’t have to try to love him; he just checked his heart and found it already brimming over. “I want you, all of it, everything you’ve ever stopped yourself from doing or pretended you didn’t want. I want everything you’ll let me have of you, any way that I can have it. I’m not mistaken or pretending and I’m not going to change my mind and I won’t leave unless you stop wanting me to stay. I love you, Phil.” He squeezes a little tighter, firms his voice. “I want to _keep_ you, and be damned to SHIELD and the UN and aliens and anything else that tries to stop me.”

Phil shakes in his arms, catching his breath with a broken sound. “Oh,” he says, soft and broken, right on the edge of what Clint can hear. “ _Clint._ Yes. I—I w-want that too. I just—right now I don’t—I can’t—”

“You don’t have to do anything right now,” Clint says. “We can stand here all day, far as I’m concerned. Or I can leave—”

“No!” Phil presses his forehead harder into Clint’s shoulder. It’s the first time since Clint explained about his hearing aids that Phil’s forgotten to keep his face in view; that, as much as anything, tells Clint how shaken he is. “I’m sorry, I know I’m not making any sense—”

“Shh, it’s okay, I won’t go anywhere if you don’t want me to.” He rubs Phil’s back again. “We could sit down if you wanted. Or, hey, we could take a nap. Naps always help.”

Phil snorts, a tiny, choked-off sound of mirth, and Clint follows the lead.

“We could lie down together,” he offers. “Nothing complicated. Just more of this—” he squeezes Phil illustratively— “only without our shoes on, and more comfy.”

Phil breathes out, shuddery and long. “Yeah,” he says. “Let’s do that.”

Clint eases back from the embrace. Before Phil can tense up again, he tucks him back against his side and steers him toward Clint’s bedroom with one arm around his waist.

“I changed the sheets this morning and everything. It’s your lucky day,” he tells him, mock-serious. 

“I guess so,” Phil says softly, and Clint ducks his head, not wanting to play the comment off but also not wanting to push. He contents himself with giving Phil another affectionate little squeeze.

When they get to the bedroom, he sits Phil down at the foot of the bed and kneels to remove his shoes. When he looks up, Phil’s looking down at him wide-eyed, like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. Clint can’t pretend that the suggestiveness of his position isn’t… inspiring, but he sets that aside for now.

“You want some sweats or something?” he asks Phil.

“You don’t have to protect my modesty, you know,” Phil says. “We’ve seen each other naked before.”

“It’s different now,” Clint tells him. “It doesn’t matter what happened before. What matters now is that you’re comfortable, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to sleep in anything with belt loops, it makes me dream I’m being swallowed by a were-gator.”

“You know there’s no such thing as a were-gator,” Phil says.

“I know what I saw, in Smolensk,” Clint says, grinning. It’s an old joke between them, comfortable and worn-in, reassuring in the middle of so much that’s big and new. “So. Sweats?”

“I—sure.”

Clint pats Phil’s knee—well okay, _technically_ that’s his thigh—as he gets up, and digs some sweats out of a drawer. “I’ll turn my back while you change,” he tells Phil.

“I make no such promises,” Phil says, the ghost of his smug look coming back for a minute, and Clint laughs, delighted. 

“I’d put on a show for you anytime, Phil, you just say the word,” he says, and tries to put a little shimmy into it as he changes into sweats and a worn tee. When he turns back around, Phil’s watching, a little rosy flush on the tips of his ears that is, frankly, adorable. He’s wearing the sweatpants and his own undershirt, the same one he had on that morning. Clint can see tufts of soft dark hair peeking out over the top of it, and he wants to bury his face there and stay for about a year. Phil must see something of his surging lust on his face, because he looks down at his bare feet, suddenly shy.

Clint feels a rush of protectiveness; he wants to pull Phil close and put his own body between Phil and anything that would hurt him. In his current mood, Phil might even let him do it for a while.

He holds out his hand and Phil takes it, gripping tight.

“Come on,” Clint says, and he pulls the covers of the bed down. Because Tony furnished his apartment, his bedding is all in shades of purple, but it’s super comfortable. He gets in and scootches over, tugging Phil in after him. Phil settles against the pillows, lying on his back with Clint on his side, facing him. Clint leans forward and brushes a kiss over Phil’s temple. Phil watches him, his eyes wide and his body tense.

“I can leave,” Clint offers again, though he wants to cringe at the thought that it’s him making Phil so uncomfortable. He can’t think of a way to make it better. 

“No, please,” Phil says. “I’m sorry, it’s not you, I promise, it’s my issue.”

“How can I help?” Clint asks, his voice getting a little bit desperate. “What do you need from me, Phil? I mean, you can have it, whatever it is, but I don’t know—I don’t want you to feel rejected but I also don’t want to be a pushy asshole. I need the op parameters.”

Phil chuckles a little, a tiny breath of a laugh. “I hardly know them myself,” he says. “I just—I need to fucking relax.”

“I could give you a backrub?” Clint suggests, and Phil flinches away violently back into the pillow.

“Or not!” Clint says, surprised by the reaction. “Sorry!” 

“No,” Phil says, and he sets his jaw. “No, I think that’s a really good idea.”

“Are you sure?” Clint asks. “Because right now you don’t look like you find the idea very relaxing.”

“Yes. I’m sure.”

“Okay. Hang out here a minute, let me grab some stuff.” Clint rolls out of bed and heads to the linen closet, pulling out a few oversized fluffy towels and a flannel sheet. He has liniment in the bathroom but there’s also a bottle of lavender massage oil that Clint got in a SHIELD gift exchange a few years back. It says on the label that it provides “natural relaxation and refreshing sleep support,” so what the hell.

He pulls down the covers on the side of the bed that Phil isn’t on and spreads out some towels to hopefully catch any oil spills.

“Should I leave the room while you get ready?” he asks.

Phil sits up, jaw flexing. “No, of course not,” he says. “I’m being ridiculous.”

“Phil.” Clint is serious, and tries to make his voice reflect it; he doesn’t want Phil to push through something unpleasant this time, not when it’s something Clint is doing to him. “I’m trusting you when you say you’re okay, but _please_ don’t let me hurt you. I don’t think I could—” suddenly, his throat seizes up and he has to clear it. He looks down at his socked feet, eyes burning. “Just, please, don’t make yourself do this if it will hurt you or, or trigger you or something. I’m not going anywhere unless you ask me to; there’s no deadline, okay?”

Phil sighs, rubbing his hand across his face. “Okay, Clint,” he says. “Okay.” He straightens, looking Clint square in the face. “This might be difficult at first, but I think it’s something I need to do,” he tells him. “I promise that I’ll stop you if my reaction is worse than I think it will be.”

“Thanks,” Clint says, feeling better about the whole thing. He knows Phil’s word is good. 

Phil peels his undershirt off over his head and rolls onto his stomach, on top of the towels. Clint shakes out the flannel sheet (this one is lavender; he’s got a theme going) and drapes it over Phil, covering him up to his neck and deliberately not thinking about the matching set of scars he caught a glimpse of when Phil took off his shirt. It’s not like he didn’t know they’d be there. It’s just, seeing them is hard.

Clint runs pretty naturally hot, but he rubs his hands briskly together as he gets ready to start, knowing how much a warm touch can soothe. When he reaches Phil, he rests a hand just at the top of his spine, curling over the vulnerable back of Phil’s neck, which is corded with tension beneath his fingers.

“I’m going to start out light,” he says. “You know the drill; any areas I need to work around?”

“Just the obvious,” Phil says, his tone maybe a little too level. “It’s healed well, but there are still some weird sensitivity issues on the scar tissue sometimes.”

“Let me know if I need to stop or change what I’m doing.”

“I will.”

Clint gives Phil’s neck a little pat, then uses both hands to start rubbing lightly up and down his back through the sheet, to get him accustomed to the touch, encourage blood flow to warm the skin. Through the soft flannel, he can feel the contours of muscle and the knobs of Phil’s spine; on the left side, the heavy ridges of scar tissue stand out. Phil’s very tense, muscles in hard knots all up and down his back.

“Shit, Phil,” Clint says. “You need to recruit a massage therapist.”

Phil snorts, settling a tiny bit beneath Clint’s hands. “Do you know how hard we had to work to keep the ones we had at SHIELD? Not a lot of them have security clearance, you know. Plus, turned out Georg was Hydra.”

“Man, nobody that evil should have that awesome of hands. What a waste. I’m gonna pull the sheet down now.” He pauses to give Phil a chance to object; when he remains quiet, Clint folds down the sheet to Phil’s hips.

Phil’s back is as strong and broad and freckled as he remembers, a back that can carry heavy burdens both literally and metaphorically. The scar is new, of course, and Clint makes himself look at it, makes himself trace it gently with his fingers, learning its contours, the places where it twists and knots and the places where his touch makes Phil shiver with sensitivity.

“You should see the other guy,” Phil says, picking up his head a little so Clint can hear him.

“Fury said you shot him through a wall.”

“I thought he’d killed you, or as good as,” Phil says, voice tight. “And he was going to keep on going until we were all dead or enslaved. Someone had to stop him.”

Clint rests his hand over the scar, fingers spread to cover as much of it as possible. “Always gotta be a hero. I’d say stop that, but… you wouldn't be Phil if you did. So just… please try not to die anymore, okay?”

“I’m doing my best,” Phil says.

“Yeah, well, I don’t trust all those green kids you’re running with these days,” Clint grumbles, smoothing his hands over the balls of Phil’s shoulders, tracing over his upper arms. Phil tenses beneath him when he dips below the elbow, so Clint leaves it for now.

“I’m gonna be nice and not tell Bobbi or Melinda you said that.”

“Two agents don’t make an agency,” Clint says. “They know it’s true. Hang on a second.” He grabs the bottle of massage oil and cracks the bottle open; the herbal scent of it fills the air as he pours a little between his palms and starts smoothing it over Phil’s skin. He starts high up on Phil’s neck, working on the tight spots just under Phil’s hairline with gradually increasing pressure. He can already tell he won’t be able to work out all the knots in one short backrub, but hopefully he can help Phil loosen up enough to sleep.

He works his way down, from Phil’s neck to his shoulders. He’s working on a cluster of knots in the left trapezius—poor Phil, between the stab wound and the hand his left side is pretty fucked up—when Phil speaks.

“I dreamed of this while I was dead,” he says, his voice quiet but still audible.

Clint freezes. “Of—me? Or…”

“Getting a massage,” Phil says. “Sitting on the beach, having massages, drinking frozen cocktails and reading. Tahiti.” 

Clint swallows hard, recognizing the name from the file. “Wasn’t that the—”

“Yeah. I still don’t know whether I made the subconscious connection on my own or whether someone was trying to be cute when they implanted the false memories.”

“Shit, Phil.”

“When I started to remember I would have these nightmares. They’d start out like memories. Tahiti. And then things would sort of… melt. Change. And I’d be lying on a table, and—well.” He cuts himself off. “Let’s just say it wasn’t a massage table.”

Clint is very still. He can feel trembling, but he isn’t sure which of them it is. Maybe it’s both. “Do you need me to stop?”

“No,” Phil says. “Keep going. I need you to keep going, to stay you. To—to stay real.”

Clint’s horrified at the implication, but he manages not to show it. He flexes his fingers a little, feeling the firm muscle beneath his hands, the soft skin slick with oil. Phil’s here now; this is real. “I can do that.”

They’re both quiet for a while as Clint works. Basic massage was actually part of the ops training curriculum at SHIELD; field agents were prone to minor muscle injuries as well as run-of-the-mill stress-induced tension. Delta had done a lot of long-term ops, many of them undercover, so the three of them had purposefully become as self-sufficient as they could. There were roles that they gravitated toward, and in the same way that Nat had usually secured their perimeter and Phil had usually made sure they had actual food with nutrition and stuff, Clint had been the go-to for massage. Nat had said it was because he had the strongest hands, but he’d always suspected it was really because they both knew how much it meant to him when they drew comfort from his touch. 

Now, he breathes into each long stroke of his hands, deliberate and slow, and the feel of knotted muscles releasing fills him with satisfaction and pride. He’d worked on Phil’s back enough in the old days to be able to read his cues, the little grunts that signified sore spots, the barely-vocalized sighs when Clint worked each one loose. Phil’s skin is flushed pink and hot to the touch and Phil’s body is lax and buttery under Clint’s hands by the time Clint reaches the base of Phil’s spine. He wishes he could dip his hands beneath the waistband of Phil’s sweats, keep on going to work out the tension in Phil’s hips and ass and long, strong legs, but it would be different, now, than it would have been before. Clint doesn’t think he could touch there and keep it therapeutic, not when the desire between them is so new and untried, and that’s not what this massage is about. There’ll be plenty of time for more, later on.

He lightens his touch and keeps rubbing over Phil’s skin, long gentle strokes the length of Phil’s back. “I’ll be right back, okay? I’m just gonna clean up a little and then I’ll come keep watch while you sleep.”

“mmmkay,” Phil murmurs.

Clint pulls the flannel sheet back up and tucks it around Phil, then pulls the rest of the covers over him, leaving just a ruffled tuft of hair poking out the top. He scrubs the extra oil off his hands with one of the spare towels, makes sure the bottle is securely closed, and extends their DND status with FRIDAY for the rest of the day. 

With everything sorted, he pulls back the covers on the other side of the bed and gets in next to Phil, who makes a sleepy noise and rolls closer. Clint curves one arm around him over the pile of covers, his throat tightening at the display. He’s still reeling from learning that Phil had felt so much for so long and he’d never noticed, that Phil had been suffering because of him and Clint had never seen. 

Never again, he resolves. Now that he knows, he can fix it. Now that he knows, he can give Phil everything. But for now, he’s going to start by watching out for Phil while he sleeps.

 

Clint opens his eyes to a beam of golden late-afternoon sun slanting across the bed from the window. Watching someone sleep sounds great in theory, but in practice when you’re warm and comfortable and somewhere safe, plus you’re trying not to move or make noise, plus you’ve maybe been running on a sleep deficit for a while, it’s easier to just join in the nap time. 

They must have moved around while they were sleeping, because Phil is lying on his side with his bare back pressed against Clint’s chest, and the arm that Clint had very carefully been keeping on top of the quilt before he fell asleep has wormed its way under the covers and the flannel sheet and is wrapped around Phil. He moves his fingers a little, feeling thick hair interrupted by ridges—he’s got his hand cupped over Phil’s scar.

Phil’s head is close by, lying on Clint’s own pillow; he tips his face forward a few inches and presses a kiss softly to Phil’s scalp. Phil’s hair still smells like lavender, short and bristly against Clint’s lips.

Phil stirs a little, sighing in his sleep, and the motion presses his ass back into Clint’s dick; suddenly the general allover aura of good feelings he was enjoying sharpens and narrows into a very different sort of enjoyment. Clint tries to ease his hips back a little without moving too much. It’s not that he thinks Phil would be offended by his dick or anything, it just seems kind of rude—given the circumstances—to spring it on him first thing without any warning.

Heh. Spring.

Clint holds still, matching Phil’s soft breathing, and just lets himself experience the moment. He’s a little too hot, what with the covers and the sweats and Phil, but other than that everything is great. Phil is there and he’s safe, inside Clint’s home, his bed, the circle of his arms. Phil is alive, and Clint loves him, and Phil loves him back. Or maybe it’s Clint who loves Phil back, given the whole pre-death situation. Whatever. There is mutual love happening, is the important thing here. Love, and probably sex later, when Phil’s feeling up to it. 

Clint chuckles to himself, maybe a little giddy. _Up._

Phil mumbles something, his voice raspy from sleep and muffled from his face being mooshed into Clint’s pillow.

“Crap, did I wake you up? I’m sorry,” Clint says. “It’s nothing, I was being dumb. You can go back to sleep, I’ll shut up. Or I could just go—”

Phil huffs and wriggles back more firmly against Clint, grabbing onto the arm that Clint was starting to pull back. Clint doesn’t move his hips in time—likely because he doesn’t really want to—and he bites his lip to hold back a groan as Phil pushes his ass into Clint’s hardening cock. He can’t help the way he pulses at the contact, blood rushing into his cock in a throbbing wave, and Phil lets out a startled little sound, his fingers clenching around Clint’s forearm.

“Sorry,” Clint mutters into his hair.

“Don’t you dare apologize,” Phil says roughly. “If you knew how long I—just. It’s good, Clint.” He moves back again, twisting a little, and Clint can feel his cock riding against the crease of Phil’s ass through the two pairs of pants. He can’t stop the moan this time; pressed together as they are, he feels Phil shiver when he hears it.

“Don’ wanna push you,” Clint gasps. “I know I came on too strong before—”

“I was right there with you,” Phil cuts him off. “Every step of the way, until I let myself get twisted up about it. I don’t want to keep going back there in my head. I want to move forward.” He twists around a little in Clint’s hold, turning until he can reach to press a short, fierce kiss to Clint’s mouth. “So go ahead, Clint. _Push me_.”

Clint might be a superhero, but he’s only fucking human. He pulls Phil the rest of the way over, and there’s maybe a little undignified flailing but who cares when it means he winds up with Phil beneath him in a cocoon of soft bedding? He tries to keep most of his weight on his knees and elbows, but it’s kind of a distant concern; most of his attention is on the bright shine in Phil’s eyes and the way Phil’s tongue sneaks out to wet his bottom lip as Clint’s hands pet all the skin they can reach. It’s basically a moral imperative that Clint chase that tongue.

Phil moans into his mouth, soft and uncontrolled, arching his body up to meet Clint’s and scrabbling at his back, pulling him down. “Easy, babe,” Clint protests, pulling his lips back just enough for his words to be understandable. Phil’s strong, but Clint’s heavy, and he doesn’t want to make Phil feel trapped. “I’m right here, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Wanna feel you,” Phil pants, twisting his fingers into the back of Clint’s shirt. He pulls again, with both arms, though the force is uneven since he doesn’t have anything to grip with on the left side. This time, Clint goes, sliding his knees back and letting his body come to rest atop Phil’s. They both groan as Phil slots into the arch of Clint’s splayed thighs, huge and hot through soft fleece. Clint just lets it wash over him for a minute, dry-humping like a teenager through biting, desperate kisses. It’s good, it’s good, it’s _so_ good, but Clint is not _actually_ a teenager anymore and he has plans—recently developed but no less detailed for it—about what his first orgasm with Phil would be like. None of those plans involved pants.

It takes him three tries to pull away from the kiss; he keeps having to go back for more. Finally, though, he manages to get a couple inches clearance. He promptly gets distracted for a minute at the way Phil looks, sweat glittering at his hairline, eyes wide, face flushed, lips reddened with kisses—with Clint’s kisses.

“You are so fucking hot,” he tells Phil.

“I’m glad you feel that way,” Phil says, “so why’d you stop?” His tone is impatient and a little snippy, and it’s glorious, to see him so much more comfortable, so much more himself.

“What—oh! Pants!” Clint says, remembering. “We need to not have them.”

Phil nods, decisive and crisp. “Good call,” he says, and damn, that’s now really hot too. It’s probably for the best Phil isn’t running Clint’s ops anymore, because it’s kind of hard to Avenge with a boner. 

(It’s the first time that Clint’s thought anything like that, and he’s briefly, distantly proud of his personal growth for about five seconds before he remembers that it’s naked time.)

It takes a minute to untangle them from the blanket burrito, but as soon as the cooler air of the room hits his skin, Clint sits up, still straddling Phil’s hips.

“You, stay put,” he instructs. “I’ve got plans for you—if that’s okay?”

Phil’s chest is heaving with fast, hard breaths, but he still manages a smug and lazy-looking smile. “I look forward to seeing your plans, Agent,” he says, and the rumble in his voice goes straight to Clint’s dick. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Clint says. “Okay. Just. Stay there a minute.” He scrambles off the bed and shucks his clothes so fast he gets his foot caught in the leg of his shorts and almost trips himself. Phil cracks up laughing, easy and free, and okay, it’s worth nearly braining himself on the bedpost to get to hear it.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, grinning as he shakes his leg free and prowls back toward the bed. “Laugh it up.”

“And to think I once used the words ‘deadly grace’ to describe you,” Phil says, through his chuckles. “Granted, I was drunk at the time.”

“It’s possible you were a little bit biased.”

“Maybe a little.” Phil holds up his fingers, about a millimeter apart. Clint wraps a hand around his wrist and pulls it towards him, kisses those fingers. Phil curves his hand to cup Clint’s cheek, and Clint turns his head to kiss the palm. It keeps hitting him, these waves of amazement, of gratitude, that Phil is here. That Phil is _his_. He shuts his eyes against the prickle of tears.

“Hey.” Phil sits up a little, propped awkwardly on his left elbow. “You okay?”

Clint blinks hard, and smiles at him, a little bit misty-eyed still. “I’m fine,” he says. “Really. I just—I’m really happy you’re here.”

Phil rubs his thumb across Clint’s cheek, smiling softly. “Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”

They look at each other for a bit, and Clint’s man enough to admit that they probably both look pretty sappy. Soon enough, though, Clint moves enough to brush his dick against the edge of the mattress, and that reminds him of his plans.

“I want to take off your pants,” he tells Phil.

“Please,” Phil says, in a dry tone that belies the way his hips thrust up a tiny bit at Clint’s words. “Feel free.”

Clint grins, and hops back onto the bed, straddling Phil on his hands and knees as Phil settles back against the pillows, letting his arms fall to his sides. He kisses Phil again, nibbling gently on the sweet curve of his bottom lip, which is by way of becoming an addiction already. 

“My pants are down there,” Phil says breathlessly, when they finally part.

“Patience, sir,” Clint says, putting all his (considerable) cocky swagger into his voice, and Phil rolls his eyes, but he’s grinning and Clint feels like a winner again. He trails his lips over Phil’s square chin, the sharp angle of his jaw—still smooth as silk, thank you Clint Barton, champion of shavers—and down the thin skin of his neck, leaving a trail of tiny suckling kisses that flush pink but should be gone in an hour or two. He can feel Phil’s pulse hammering beneath his lips. It’s the best thing.

He spends a little time at the base of Phil’s neck, the hollow where the wings of his collarbone meet that demands attention and the spot a few inches over where Phil once broke three bones keeping Clint from falling off a cliff to his death. He can’t feel the knot where it healed anymore, but he knows it’s there. Phil must remember the same thing, because his hand drifts up from where it had been getting acquainted with Clint’s ass and strokes through his hair.

“It doesn’t even hurt when it rains anymore,” Phil tells him softly. “Benefits of the… treatment.”

“I’m glad,” Clint says, and leaves it at that, because now he needs to rub his face in Phil’s chest hair a little bit, and oh look at that, there’s a nipple there, how nice. Phil lets out an entirely gratifying gasp when he sucks it into his mouth, flicking the tip with his tongue. He stays there until the nipple is pink and swollen, then moves to the other side. He keeps it up for ages, learning all the textures of Phil’s gorgeous chest, the broad planes of muscle, curls of thick salt-and-pepper hair, the surprisingly tender nipples and the twisted scar. He needs to study that for a while, the place where Phil died/lived, because he doesn’t know which bits of it are numb, still, and which bits will make Phil shiver and gasp if Clint traces them with his tongue. 

He finds out.

When he’s finally satisfied, he moves down further, and Phil’s abs contract as he nuzzles his way down Phil’s happy trail to the waistband of his sweatpants, which are frankly barely up to the task of containing Phil’s straining erection. Clint’s mouth waters at the sight, but first he needs to pay some attention to the arch of hipbone peeking out above the low-slung gray fleece.

“ _Clint,_ ” Phil pants, his voice pleading, and fine, okay, Clint’s maybe stretched this out a little far. After all, it’s not like this will be his only chance.

He lifts the waistband carefully over Phil’s cock (which is naked under the pants, and holy fuck, how often was Phil going commando and Clint didn’t know it?) and then shoves them down as far as he can reach; Phil helps, kicking them the rest of the way off and leaving himself bare against Clint’s purple sheets.

He sits back on his heels, surveying. He doesn’t know where to begin; he’s dying to get his mouth around that cock—which, he knew Phil was hung, but _damn_ —but that would leave so much territory unexplored. Still, though—oh, hang on. Shit. He’s forgetting something.

“So I meant to bring this up sooner,” he says, stroking Phil’s thighs idly, “but I kinda got distracted. So, condoms? I’m good either way.” The Avengers, much like SHIELD, maintained a standard regimen of prophylaxis and testing after any fluid exposure, and it wasn’t like Clint’d had a lot of time for a social life since New York.

“I’m clear, too—you probably saw my file.”

Clint nods. The file was comprehensive.

“So as far as protection goes,” Phil says, “I think it’s up to us what we prefer.”

Clint rubs the back of his neck. “I, ah. I’d like it if we went bare. If that’s okay with you. I’d like to—I want you all over me,” he blurts, and then feels his face heat; he knows it’s kind of dirty, what he’s asking, and he hopes Phil thinks it’s sexy-dirty and not ew-gross-dirty. 

“I like that idea,” Phil says, and his tone, coupled with the little jerk of his cock, makes it pretty clear that he’s onboard the sexy-dirty train.

“Great!” Clint says. “Okay, I need to get between your legs, help me out.” A little bit of wriggling reverses their positions, with Clint kneeling on the inside of Phil’s legs instead of the outside as Phil watches him, hot-eyed.

“You’re where you wanted to be, Barton,” Phil says, and he sounds wrecked and it’s amazing. “So what now?”

Clint reaches down and gets his hands under Phil’s knees, pulls Phil’s legs up around him and tugs him down the bed a few inches. “This now,” he says, and Phil lets out a choked yelp as Clint licks a wide, wet stripe over the crinkled skin of Phil’s sack.

He can’t decide between a blowjob and a rimjob, so he splits the difference for a while. Phil’s balls are full and heavy, drawn up tight to his body, and Clint uses his tongue to play with them, rolling them around and making Phil arch into the contact, powerful thighs clenching around him. Clint chases that reaction a little longer, then moves again, drawing a line with his tongue down Phil’s perineum to his hole. Phil convulses at the first lick, his heels drumming on Clint’s back as his muscles contract, thrusting himself harder into Clint’s mouth. Clint laughs against Phil’s skin, gets a firmer grip on his flexing ass, and goes to work.

It’s only been a few hours since Phil showered, and he tastes like clean salt and a little like soap. It’s been a while since Clint did this—honestly, it’s been a while since there was anyone Clint wanted to know this intimately—and he’d forgotten how much he loves it, how hot it is with the right person. Clint’s an archer, okay, he’s all about tiny adjustments that cause big results, and he feels powerful and protective and triumphant all at once as each flicker of his tongue makes Phil gasp and clench and writhe. It’s for him, it’s just for him, Phil’s sobbing breath, his cut-off cries, the tensing of Phil’s thighs around him; it’s his and nobody else’s.

When he finally pulls back, his jaw and tongue are aching and his lips are sore. He gets one hand around to stroke a finger over Phil’s wet rim and Phil moans again, his voice roughened. Clint nudges in—just a little, spit’s okay for this but he doesn’t want to hurt Phil—and Phil’s body opens soft and hot around the tip of his finger, loosened muscles fluttering around the slight intrusion. Phil tries to push back, to get Clint deeper, but he’s able to catch the motion and ride it out, pull away gently.

“Hey, baby, careful,” he says, and maybe it’s stupid to call Phil that but Phil is naked and open for Clint and the words just spill out. “I don’t wanna hurt you.”

“Then _do_ something,” Phil demands, “Clint, please, I need—I—”

“I got you,” Clint promises. “I got you, babe, I promise, I’ll take care of you,” and he shifts them a little so he can reach Phil’s cock. His mouth and chin are wet, still, and he wriggles his jaw once more to ease the muscles before he opens his mouth wide and takes the fat head between his lips.

Phil groans out a breath like it just got punched out of him, his back arching, driving his cock across Clint’s tongue. Clint wishes he could just let Phil keep going, stuff his cock down Clint’s throat and fill him from the inside out, but he hasn’t sucked cock in years; plus, he wasn’t ever actually a sword-swallower, no matter what rumors he’s encouraged in the past. Anyway, he’d have needed to ease into something Phil’s size even when he was in practice. He promises himself that he’ll work up to it, though. He’s always been goal-oriented.

For now, he grips the shaft tight in his other hand and concentrates his efforts on the tip, which is smearing salty fluid across the roof of his mouth. Phil’s cock is heavy on his tongue and in his hand, hot and firm and silky-soft, pulsing with blood, so alive. Clint’s world has pulled in, narrowed to this bed and this man, around and inside him, holding and held. He licks over the slit, greedy for the taste of pre-come and the sound of the noises Phil makes when he does it.

“I’m—I— _Clint_ ,” Phil pants, “gonna come, I—”

Clint hums in approval, earning another spurt of fluid, and tightens his lips and sucks, makes his tongue yielding and wet as he bobs his head, taking Phil as deep as he can. Phil tenses, his cock going suddenly, impossibly harder, and he tips over into orgasm with a wavering, soft cry. Clint lets his lips fall open and pulls back a bit so he can see Phil’s blissed-out face through his eyelashes. He keeps his hand tight, milking Phil through the pulses, lapping at the head of Phil’s cock with the flat of his tongue and letting Phil’s come fall where it will. It slips from his mouth, back down Phil’s cock and over Clint’s knuckles, dripping from Clint’s chin onto his chest, smearing filthy and perfect all over them both. 

When the last shiver of pleasure is over, Clint pulls back, letting Phil’s legs fall back to the bed, and sits up. Phil’s watching him, eyes blown dark and face set; it almost looks like Phil’s about to fight, except for the sex flush on his face and chest and his lips, bitten red and wet. Their eyes meet, and then Phil twists upright with a surge of powerful abs, fisting his hand in the hair at the nape of Clint’s neck and hauling him forward into a hard, consuming kiss. He chases the taste of himself into Clint’s mouth, sucking it from his lips and tongue, and Clint melts under his grip, trying to rut his own neglected cock against Phil but unable to get any leverage.

“You taste like me,” Phil gasps against his mouth.

“Fuck yeah, yes,” Clint whimpers, rolling his head back to feel Phil’s grip on the back of his neck. “Taste like you, smell like you, I’ve got you everywhere, Phil, look, I’m yours, I—ah!” and he has to stop talking, because Phil’s pulled his head back and fastened his mouth over the sticky trail of his own come that leads from the corner of Clint’s mouth down over his neck to his chest. Clint feels every suck like it’s right on the head of his dick. He’s so close, closer than he’d realized. He’s aching to come but he doesn’t want it to be over. Not yet.

When Clint’s strung out and trembling with need, Phil finally pulls back. He untangles his fingers from Clint’s hair, stroking softly when Clint makes a sad little noise.

“Let me make you come,” Phil says, “Clint, please, I have to feel you come, what do you want? I’ll do anything—well,” and he jerks his head down at his own cock, softened and still wet against his thigh, “anything I’m physically capable of.”

“It won’t take much,” Clint says, shaky. 

“You could fuck me—”

“I’d come before I got inside,” he admits. “Um, maybe just—” he runs a hand down Phil’s furry chest, feeling Phil’s skin all hot and soft and sweat-damp. “Can I… I know it’s stupid but can I rub off against you maybe? Get—get you messy too?”

Phil’s eyes slide shut as he lets out a shuddering breath. “Fuck. Yes. Here, help me out, okay?” he asks, and Clint nods, too hard; his neglected cock is throbbing between his legs, so sensitized that every whisper of air across the tight skin makes him shiver. He’s still kneeling between Phil’s legs, and Phil’s abs are almost close enough to brush the head of his cock. He’s going to be there, soon, right where he belongs.

Phil runs his hand across Clint’s chest, scooping up as much of his come as he can. Clint’s mouth drops open and he gasps when Phil takes his handful and smears it across his own belly. Phil doesn’t give him time to fully absorb what’s happening, just shifts a little, hooking his left elbow over Clint’s shoulder and pulling hard on his ass with his right hand. Clint moves where Phil directs, and makes a high, wheezing noise when his cock makes contact with Phil’s skin.

Phil clutches him hard, pulling him in with arms and legs, his fingers digging into the meat of Clint’s ass as Clint’s cock slides across his stomach. After so long with no contact it’s amazing, overwhelming, the slip of come and the rasp of hair and the heat of flesh, Phil’s breath against his neck and the ache of his grasping fingers. Clint heaves against him, into him, once and again and _again—_ and then his body bows with the force of it as he comes in scalding waves on Phil, all over Phil. Phil makes a noise that’s like laughter and sobbing and triumph and hisses into Clint’s ear, his grip gone impossibly tighter.

Clint’s too far gone to make out any words, though. All he can do is cling to Phil, twitching with aftershocks that each push a little more come out into the slippery mess between their bodies, while Phil mouths over his neck and sucks on his earlobe, humming wordless reassurances.

“I think I pulled a groin muscle,” Clint says stupidly, after his body has stopped shaking. Phil chuckles, and the movement is ticklish on Clint’s over-stimulated skin; he starts laughing, too, and then they’re both clutching each other and laughing until their sides ache, clinging together in the middle of Clint’s thoroughly ruined sheets with the afternoon light warm on their shoulders.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter, "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," will go up in around two weeks. 
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone who has followed and left me feedback!! You make writing a joy.


	8. I Wanna Hold Your Hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remember, it's totally waterproof and can go in the autoclave. Safety first!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A million thanks to Kathar for tremendous beta!

Clint wakes up from his post-post-nap-sex nap when the door chimes, mainly because FRIDAY is duplicating the chime straight to his hearing aid. He peels himself apart from Phil—literally, ugh, and they’re completely disgusting now but it doesn’t stop his dick from twitching a little at the memory of how they got that way—and goes to answer it. Fortunately, Phil’s sleeping hard, and his only response to being left is to make an adorable grumpy noise and roll over to cuddle Clint’s pillow.

Clint swallows, a lump rising in his throat at the sight of Phil’s bare skin against his rumpled sheets. He can hardly believe how much has happened, and how quickly—hell, when he woke up that morning he didn’t even know he was in love with Phil, and now… well. It feels so _right_ that it’s weird; he keeps forgetting to be surprised. It’s like he’s known forever, like it’s been true forever, just lurking in the back of his mind like a shy guest at a party waiting to be acknowledged. He’s moving back towards the bed, hand reaching out to touch, when the chime goes again and he turns back to the door with a sigh. 

Halfway across the living room, Clint remembers that he’s naked and covered with tacky half-dried come and makes a detour to the bathroom to grab his robe. He scrubs his arm across his mouth, hoping the ratty old terrycloth will get any telltale… remains, and answers the chime.

There’s a robot at the door.

Clint entertains the possibility that he went back to sleep and is dreaming he opened the door (he does this sometimes), but then he remembers that he lives with Tony Stark, and robots just sometimes sort of happen.

“Hey,” he tells the robot.

It beeps at him cheerfully and holds out a plastic crate in its arm.

“That’s for you, Agent Barton, with Mr. Stark’s compliments,” FRIDAY says helpfully.

“Okay,” Clint says, and takes the crate. “Thanks,” he tells the robot, who beeps again and turns away, heading down the hall toward the freight elevator.

The crate turns out to contain Phil’s hand in its metal case, as well as a styrofoam cooler that holds a bottle of chilled champagne, two whisper-thin crystal flutes that probably cost more than Clint makes in a week, a box of chocolate truffles, and a note.

_Thought you might need this,_ Clint reads. _Remember, it’s totally waterproof and can go in the autoclave. Safety first! The Mark II will be ready Saturday afternoon, so take a break. I’ve cleared your calendars; you’re DND for the duration. Supplies will be delivered at appropriate intervals. Have fun, Tony. PS, Pepper says congrats, she’s very happy for you and we should all have dinner sometime._

Clint shakes his head, but he’s grinning like a fool. It’s reassuring, to know that Tony’s on their side in this; after everything he and Tony had been through designing the hand, the things they said and the things they pointedly didn’t talk about, it feels appropriate after all that Tony should have been there for the—well. Not the end, certainly. Not the climax—that had happened in private. The new beginning, maybe, if that wasn’t too sappy. And he’s glad for the message from Pepper; she's spent most of the summer dealing with Ultron-related Stark Industries shit on the west coast and internationally, so he’s not been sure how she’s taking the whole Phil situation. He hopes she and Phil are able to rekindle their friendship. Phil had always really liked her; they’re like some kind of long-lost competence twins. 

He sticks the champagne in the fridge and wanders back to the bedroom, detouring first to transfer a load of laundry into the dryer (he’d gotten distracted earlier—with good reason—and forgotten about it). His stomach growls as he sets the dial on the machine; he and Phil need to eat something a little more substantial than truffles. First, though, he’s going to wake Phil up with kisses and see if he can talk him into a joint shower. It’s good to have a plan.

Phil is still lying on his stomach, face buried in Clint's pillow, golden light from the window dappled over the curves of his broad, scarred back. Clint has another moment of emotional whiplash; having Phil in his bed seems new and strange and exciting, but at the same time it feels like Phil’s just taken a place that belonged to him already. He wonders which way Phil will feel. He hopes, either way, that it’s a good feeling.

"Hey, Phil," Clint says, soft but not too soft; he knows better than to approach a sleeping agent in silence. Phil stirs, pressing his face further into the pillow. Clint hates to disturb him, but he’d also hate Phil to wake up for good at midnight, blood sugar crashing and sleep schedule fucked.

He rubs his hand tenderly down the warm skin over Phil's spine, bending to kiss a constellation of freckles that looks a little like a drawn bow. "Babe, c'mon, we need to eat.”

He can see when Phil wakes up properly; his back tenses. Clint hopes that it’s “I woke up in a strange bed” tension and not “oh shit I slept with someone I shouldn’t have” tension. 

“Hey, Phil,” Clint says again. “Hey, you’re cool, you’re at my place.” He rests his hand lightly on Phil’s shoulder, ready to move away if need be, but Phil slumps under the touch, turning his head to blink sleepily at Clint with one eye just showing over the pillowcase. Clint watches as Phil’s brain comes online, the way his glance flicks over Clint’s chest, still naked and come-smeared under the open sides of his robe. It’s a relief when the part of Phil’s face that Clint can see smooths into an expression that Clint hasn’t seen before but would like to see more of in the future, sleek and smug and very well pleased.

“Yeah,” Clint says, grinning at him like a huge sap and bending down to kiss the happy crinkles at the corner of Phil’s visible eye. “You got me all dirty,” he observes, putting on a comically overdone leer that he hopes will make Phil laugh. “Wanna come help me clean up?”

Phil pushes himself up on his elbows—Clint admires the ripple of motion that traces down Phil’s back to his ass at the movement—and gives him an eyebrow. “You’re terrible,” he says, but his voice is warm with amusement.

Clint bends down and sneaks another kiss, though it’s a little hard to do when he’s smiling so much. “Yeah, but you love it,” he says, and he almost doesn’t sound like he’s asking for reassurance.

“You know I do,” Phil tells him, sincere and certain, and Clint barely stops himself from taking his robe off and getting right back into bed.

“So, shower,” Clint suggests, “and then supper?”

“It’s that late?” Phil looks at the bedside clock and makes a face. “Wow.”

“You needed the rest,” Clint says. “I mean, if you’re gonna keep up with Hawkeye…”

Phil rolls his eyes, levering himself upright. "I think I can manage," he says. "Please tell me your shower is as ridiculous as the ones downstairs."

"More ridiculous," Clint promises, holding out a hand and waggling his fingers. "C'mon, wait'll you get a load of this."

Phil takes his hand and lets Clint brace him as he stands. He doesn't need the help, really, but Clint’s glad for the excuse to touch. 

Clint's master bath is enormous. There’s a tub that would fit two Avengers or four regular people, a separate toilet room, and a rainfall shower that’s as big as the entire bathroom in his place in Brooklyn. "FRIDAY, shower program, please," he says, as they enter, and the lights go soft as the shower kicks in and the underfloor heating cuts on with a whirr. Clint spares a moment to be thankful that his hearing aids are waterproof; it’ll be hard enough to understand Phil over the noise of the water without taking them out. 

"You're right," Phil says, leaning nonchalant against the gold-flecked purple granite vanity. It’s probably cold again his bare ass, but he doesn't let on. "This is truly absurd."

Clint shucks his robe theatrically and opens the shower door. "Come on," he says. "Lemme wash your back."

"It's not my _back_ that needs washing," Phil says, but he's already following Clint. 

"I'll wash anything you want," Clint promises, and can’t help groaning as he moves into the water. "Shit, that feels amazing.” The entire ceiling of the shower is one enormous showerhead that can switch between “rainfall” and “waterfall” settings. There are also jets set into the walls and a couple of handheld spray attachments. It’s epic. He rolls his shoulders under the spray—which feels exactly like standing in heavy rain, if rain were hot and awesome—and blinks water out of his lashes to see how Phil likes it.

Phil’s standing with his eyes closed, letting the water run over him, plastering his hair down and dripping off his nose and chin. Apart from the nudity, it reminds Clint of that night in the New Mexico desert when Thor had come after his hammer, when Clint and Phil had gotten drenched by the storm. He remembers squelching back to the hotel with Phil afterward for a change of clothes. They’d tried to make the shitty in-room coffeemakers heat up enough water for the cups-o-noodles they’d gotten from the vending machine, and eaten a strange, middle of the night meal of instant soup and snack cakes while they waited to hear back from the agents tailing Selvig.

It was the last mission they’d had together before Clint had been assigned to Pegasus and Fury had pulled Phil back to HQ. For a long time, Clint had thought it would be one of the last memories of Phil he’d ever have. At least it had been a good one, companionable and warm and easy.

“I feel like I should be up in a crane holding an arrow on Thor,” he tells Phil, and Phil looks over with a grin. 

“Yeah, except it was freezing that night,” Phil says. “Plus, well, naked.”

“Mmm.” Clint steps closer, until their chests just brush, Phil’s wet hair the barest tickle against his skin. He cups Phil’s face in his hands and leans in to kiss drops of water off the end of his nose, the point of his chin, his bottom lip. “You’re right, this is much better.”

Phil lets out a long sigh, looking at Clint from under lashes clumped with water. “I’m still having trouble believing this,” he admits.

Clint kisses the bump on the bridge of his nose. “Our lives have gotten pretty unbelievable,” he says. “You’re alive—” his fingers tighten a little on Phil’s jaw, and he makes himself relax and keep talking. “People with alien DNA exist and can develop superpowers. The world’s foremost robotics engineer is personally building you a robot hand. And then, as if that wasn’t enough, I came in and changed the parameters on you again.”

Phil lifts his hand to cover Clint’s where it’s resting on his face. “I didn’t think I’d be able to fix it,” he says. “I knew you wouldn’t hold a grudge, that isn’t who you are, but I didn’t dare hope I’d even get your friendship back, let alone that you’d… care.”

“That I’d love you,” Clint corrects him, and Phil’s eyes slide closed like he can’t even bear to look at Clint and hear him at the same time.

“I thought I’d ruined everything,” Phil says, and there’s something raw in his voice that makes Clint’s heart twist. “That even if there’d ever been a chance, that after… TAHITI… you’d never be able to see me as anything but one more man who betrayed your trust. And then I got here, and you could hardly stand to look at me—”

“Yeah, I, uh, I’m sorry about that,” Clint says, hands flexing uneasily. He wants to wrap Phil up in his arms, but he also wants to be able to be sure what he’s saying, so he stays put. “With the food and all. And the stalking. It’s been brought to my attention that my coping mechanisms leave something to be desired.”

“It’s fine,” Phil says. “You’re fine. You let me off easy, if anything.”

“Stop beating yourself up over this, Phil,” Clint says. He knows he had a right to be angry, but he wishes now that he hadn’t pushed it so hard. He’d been unknowingly hurting Phil for so long, the last thing he’d have ever wanted to do; now that he knows, he feels driven to make up for it, to give Phil happiness on purpose instead of pain by accident. He tries to put his feelings into his voice. “You’re breaking your own rules, babe. You screw up, you fix it, you move forward and don’t do it again. Remember?”

“I just—how can you forgive me?” He’s biting his lip, looking stricken. “ _I_ wouldn’t forgive me.”

“You’d forgive _me_ , though,” Clint says, his voice soft but certain.

“I—yeah,” Phil admits. “I would.”

“I’m not saying it’s not hard,” Clint says, “or that it didn’t hurt—hell, it still does, sometimes.”

“I’m—”

“Lemme finish.” He strokes his thumb over Phil’s cheekbone, past the fine wrinkles at the corner of his eye, so familiar. So precious, and so nearly lost forever. “It hurt, and some of that’s on you, and some of that’s on other people. But it would hurt me more if I had a chance to have you in my life again and wasted it. Because if I did that, it would be on _me_. My hurt and yours both.”

Phil closes his eyes. “I don’t deserve you,” he whispers, the sound almost entirely lost in the shower noise, but the shape of the words clear.

“World’d be a pretty shitty place, Phil, if we all got what we deserve.” He kisses Phil again, soft little presses of lip to lip, so tender he feels like his chest will burst open and spill feelings all over like that maple syrup disaster that time. It’s important for them to talk like this, he knows, but he doesn’t want them to get stuck dwelling on the bad things; there’s so much ahead of them, now. They have to remember that. He wants Phil to remember that, to really believe it. He wants to explore the part of Phil he keeps getting glimpses of, Phil the lover: sexy and playful, powerful and reverent. 

He catches Phil’s eye and smiles, trying to lighten the mood a little. “Wanna help me wash my back?”

“By ‘back,’ I hope you mean ‘ass,’” Phil says, clearing his throat. He’s still a little misty-eyed, Clint thinks, though of course that could just be the shower, but his smug little grin looks almost normal. He’s trying, following Clint’s lead, and it feels so amazing to be in sync with him again that Clint feels like bursting into song or some shit.

“You see right through me, boss.” He grins, wide and doofy, throws in a wink for good measure, more silly than truly flirty. Just playing a little. 

Phil raises his hand, brushes a thumb feather-light over the corner of Clint’s mouth. “Phil,” he says. “I mean—I know you don’t mean it like that. But… I’m too many people’s boss, lately. I’d—I—I like it when you call me by my name.” 

Clint’s heart squeezes a little, thinking of it; he hadn’t really considered that being made the Director of SHIELD-in-exile meant that Phil would literally be in charge of everyone in his daily life. Even the ones he’s closest to, like Melinda and Daisy, still think of him, on some level, as their boss. It must be exhausting, not to have anyone nearby who doesn’t answer to him in some way. It must be lonely. 

“You’ve got your come all over me, _Phil_ ,” Clint says, trying to put a little bedroom huskiness into his voice, and Phil actually fucking shivers. It’s amazing. “You gonna help me get it off?”

Phil reaches out, tracing a finger over one of the sticky patches on Clint’s torso. “I don’t know if I want to,” he says. “It’s a good look.”

Clint arches into Phil’s touch. “You’re a good look,” he says, nonsensically.

Phil’s eyes crease, his mouth twitching in amusement. “Thank you,” he says gravely. He brushes his thumb over one of Clint’s nipples, and Clint’s cock twitches even though he’s pretty sure he’s come enough for, like, three days already today. He makes an undignified little noise and leans closer, trying for more pressure, more closeness, more _Phil_. 

Phil’s hand flattens on Clint’s chest and he slides it around to Clint’s shoulder blade, letting Clint step into the circle of his arm. Clint lays his hand on Phil’s shoulder, like they’re about to start dancing, and rests his thumb on the throb of Phil’s pulse. Phil sways toward him, closing the last few inches between their bodies. Clint lets his hand skim down over Phil’s shoulder and arm, unthinking, and they both startle when his fingers brush the seam between Phil’s flesh and the metal of the socket.

“Sorry!” Clint jerks his hand back; he starts to move away, but Phil tightens the grip he’s got on Clint’s back, pulls him closer again. 

“It’s okay,” Phil says, making sure that his face is in Clint’s eyeline. “You can touch it.”

Clint puts his hand back on Phil’s bicep, moves it slowly down toward the elbow. “Does it hurt?”

“Every day,” Phil says, and Clint freezes.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he protests. 

“It’s not—it’s phantom pain,” Phil explains. “The nerves aren’t finished healing into the socket, yet.”

Clint’s remembering the conversation, now, Tony laying out the options: a longer healing time and more pain, in exchange for improved integration and control. “Can I—I mean, does anything help it?”

“I take medication,” Phil says, shrugging. “Try to avoid triggers. Wearing the hand actually helps, too, but I left it downstairs.”

“Oh!” Clint perks up. “I have it! I mean, it’s in the living room. Tony sent it up with a robot. Hang on.”

“Clint, you don’t—” Phil starts, but Clint’s already out of the shower, not bothering to grab a towel or anything, just dashing bare-assed and dripping out into the living room and grabbing the case. 

He brings the whole thing back into the bathroom with him. “Do you want to come out? Or I can bring it in so you don’t get cold,” he says. Phil is still standing under the spray, looking at him with a raised eyebrow through the open shower door.

“As I was saying,” Phil says, “it’s not actually bothering me right now.”

“…Oh.” Clint feels his face heat. “Sorry.”

Phil cracks a smile. “I do appreciate the gesture, though. It’s nice of you to give me a hand.”

“Oh my God,” Clint says, staring at him. He shouldn’t be surprised; Phil’s always had more than his fair share of law-enforcement graveyard humor, but damn. “That was _terrible_. Too soon, Phil.” 

“You can’t call too soon, it’s my hand,” Phil tells him, smirking. “Now put that down and get back in here.” 

Clint sets the case on the counter sheepishly and goes back into the shower, shivering as the hot water runs over his goose-pimpled skin.

“Come here,” Phil says, and tugs him close, tucking his left arm around Clint’s waist and rubbing his hand briskly over Clint’s back. It feels a little funny, yielding flesh transitioning to hard metal right next to Clint’s spine, but he likes it; it’s a unique feeling, a sensation that belongs to Phil and Phil alone. Clint likes the thought that Phil’s arm around him would feel different from any other arm.

“Mmmm.” Clint hums happily, nosing into the hollow of Phil’s collarbone and lipping at the line of tendon that stands out when Phil turns his head. “You gonna clean me up, babe?”

He’s teasing, mostly, but Phil pulls back a few inches, does that thing that’s already becoming a habitual gesture where he turns his head a little to make sure Clint can see his mouth.

“Would you let me?” Phil asks, then clamps his mouth shut like that wasn’t what he meant to say. “I mean, is that something you would like?”

“I’d love it,” he says, his voice a little more vehement than he was intending; he’d not really thought about it before, not seriously, but now his brain is throwing up vivid images of Phil’s touch all over him, making him soft and clean and ready for whatever comes next, and he _wants_ it. He can feel Phil twitch against him, his arms tightening just a fraction before he lets go. It makes the idea even hotter, thinking that it’s something Phil wants too.

Clint spreads out his arms in a sort of _ta-da!_ motion. “Have at it,” he offers.

Phil smiles, though there’s something a little bit nervous around his eyes. “In all seriousness, I may need to borrow a hand now and then,” he says. “Is that okay?”

“Anything you need,” Clint tells him instantly. “Just tell me what to do.”

“Thanks.” Phil touches one of the controls on the side of the shower, diverting part of the spray to one of the pull-out shower heads that line the wall. Clint’s got a nice steamy pocket of shower to stand in, but he’s no longer getting sprayed on directly. Phil wets a washcloth under the spray, then drapes it over his shoulder and reaches to the little shelf where Clint’s shampoo and stuff are, the high-end spa shit Tony stocks the Tower with that smells kind of like mowing the lawn and kind of like lemons. 

Phil snicks open the bottle of body wash with his thumb. “Hold out your hand, please?” he asks.

Clint reaches out as if to take the bottle, but Phil tucks it under his left arm and turns Clint’s hand over so it’s palm up. He curls Clint’s fingers up a little, making a cup of Clint’s palm, then bends to press a fleeting kiss over the meat of Clint’s thumb.

“Hold there,” Phil says, and squirts a pool of body wash into Clint’s hand. He puts the bottle back, pulls the washcloth down from his shoulder, and dips it into the pool of soap, squashing it ticklish around Clint’s hand until it’s white with summer-smelling foam.

He holds the cloth poised for a moment, eyes flicking hungrily over Clint’s wet skin, and murmurs something Clint doesn’t catch.

“What was that?”

It’s hard to tell—Phil’s flushed from the hot water—but Clint thinks he actually gets a little deeper pink. “Sorry,” Phil says. “I, ah. I was talking to myself. It was nothing, just…” he takes a deep breath. “You are so beautiful,” he tells Clint. His expression is so soft and open it’s hard to look at. Clint drops his eyes, seeing his bony hands, knobby knees, the patchwork of scars over his weather-beaten skin.

“I got some miles on me,” he says. “But hey, I know you like ‘em vintage.”

“Classic,” Phil corrects him. He reaches out with the soapy cloth, rubbing it over Clint’s still-outstretched hand. “One of a kind.” His touch skates over Clint’s callouses, the bumps of his knuckles and the tender spaces between Clint’s fingers. “Irreplaceable.”

Clint feels—he doesn’t know how he feels; all kinds of ways, all at once, shy and bold and horny and, and fucking _cherished_ , like he’s suddenly in an old pop song. He’s probably red all over, between the hot water and the way Phil’s looking at him right now. “You, too,” he tells Phil, his voice hoarse. 

Phil rubs the cloth over his wrist and forearm, tracing over the tan lines from where his armguard sits, lingering in the ticklish crook of Clint’s elbow before moving up. A lot of people Clint’s been with have been kind of obsessed with his arms (as well they should be, heh, he works hard on those), but the way Phil touches them is something else again; caring, and careful, but not awed. Phil touches them like the way he touched Clint’s bow or Nat’s gauntlets, the few times that he’s needed to: respectful, deft, a little deferential. It feels like _mission accomplished_ , Clint thinks fuzzily. It feels like _welcome home_. He lets his eyes slide shut and just lets himself feel as the cloth traces over his back and shoulders, over his chest and abs. He can feel his chest rumbling with satisfied little sounds, though he isn’t sure, with the shower and all, whether they’re actually loud enough for Phil to hear. He hopes that Phil is enjoying himself even half as much as Clint is, that whatever it was that he wanted to get out of this, Clint’s giving it to him.

Clint wants to give him everything.

“Can I borrow your hand again?” Phil asks, and Clint opens his eyes, holding it out. He’s expecting some more soap, but instead Phil grasps his forearm like he’s bracing himself for leverage. Clint holds back, tightening his muscles and squaring his stance, ready for whatever Phil needs him to do; he’s not sure what he was expecting, but he’s startled when Phil uses the grip to balance as he lowers himself to his knees.

“Phil?”

Phil smiles at him, a wicked little gleam of teeth. “I’m only half through,” he points out, and Clint feels his eyes go wide and his dick twitch. He’s already chubbing up some, just from being naked with Phil, from touching and being touched by Phil, but the current visual is, ahem, accelerating his interest. Phil doesn’t go for the grope, though, just pats Clint’s hipbone affectionately and bends down to wash Clint’s feet. 

It makes Clint’s breath catch in his throat, seeing Phil like that, his lashes a dark fan on his cheekbones as he looks down, immersed in his task. His face is peaceful, beautiful, and Clint doesn’t really understand it—Clint’s feet take a lot of punishment, okay, they aren’t exactly sexy or whatever—but he’s pretty much a million percent in favor of anything that makes Phil look like that, so he moves meekly the way Phil wants him to, lifting his feet and putting them down, adjusting his stance when Phil nudges him. Phil’s washcloth traces Clint’s calves, his knees, then his thighs, then he turns Clint around with a little push to one hip. Clint heaves a breath; his skin is tingling pleasantly from the gentle scrubbing, tickling a little with bubbles, and the band of untouched skin around his groin and ass feels prickly with anticipation.

At first, it isn’t too different from the rest; Phil washes Clint’s butt with the same gentle scrubbing motion that he’d used on his shins, then pauses for a long moment.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” he says, his voice raised and clear but with a tremble of something new underneath, “could you spread for me?”

Clint has to clear his throat twice before he can make words. “Course,” he manages, and reaches back to pull his own asscheeks apart. He can feel Phil leaning in, so close Clint can feel his breath, but not making a sound—at least, not one Clint can hear. Clint’s never felt like this before, exposed and silly and vulnerable, his face burning and his cock hard; he’s not sure how long Phil just looks at him in silence, looks at Clint fucking—fucking _presenting_ himself. Clint wants to stop, to make a joke, to break the tension; he never wants to stop, wants to hold himself ready and open for Phil indefinitely, eyes burning and queasy with lust. The more uncomfortable Clint feels, the more turned on he gets, because he’s doing it on purpose, because Phil asked him to. Because he’s doing it for Phil.

The first soft swipe of the washcloth down his crack startles a groan out of him, and he feels the unique soft-hard of Phil’s left arm coming to rest on his thigh, a comforting touch.

“I’m okay,” he manages. “Keep going.”

Phil’s very thorough, cleaning from the base of Clint’s spine all the way down to right behind his balls, then returning to pay special attention to his asshole. By the time he’s done, Clint’s fingers are digging in to the meat of his glutes and his chest is heaving as he struggles to hold himself still.  

“Turn, please,” Phil says, and Clint does. He doesn’t move his hands—Phil hasn’t said to let go, yet, and for some reason it seems important that Clint waits until he does. 

Phil looks up at him, his pupils blown wide, his cock hanging heavy between his splayed thighs. He licks his lips, and Clint echoes him, biting back a needy little sound. The sight of Phil so affected from something so simple makes him feel shaky; he wants to fall to the floor and kiss him, he wants to push him up against the wall and swallow his cock, he wants everything, all at once. As they look at each other, the connection between them heavy in the air, it feels like anything might happen, and Clint would welcome it.

Phil drops the cloth onto the floor and reaches for Clint with bare, soapy fingers. Clint pants as Phil massages the suds all over his balls, into the creases of his thighs; when Phil finally touches his erection, he makes an embarrassingly loud noise, and Phil looks up again, hot-eyed.

“Fuck, you’re amazing,” he says, and his voice is actually creaky. “Just a bit more, okay?”

Clint nods, and Phil reaches over and up a little, pulls out one of the spray attachments at waist height and turns it on. He rinses Clint off, the hot pulses feeling amazing on his sensitized skin. Phil doesn’t avoid his groin, but he doesn’t linger, either, just playing the gentle stream over Clint’s skin so that all the soap is washed away.

“Turn, please,” Phil says again, and rinses the back, Clint’s legs and his spread-open ass, then the water goes away and Clint feels Phil stroking gently over the place where he’s still gripping his own cheeks, the soft touch flashing through him like lightning.

“You can let go,” Phil says, and then kisses the place where Clint’s fingers were when he obeys, once on each side, achingly gentle. “Can I get a hand up?”

Clint turns back around and braces Phil to his feet, seizing the opportunity to lean in for a kiss. After holding himself still for so long, the contact feels amazing; he pushes himself into Phil’s body with a groan, grinding up against his hot skin, clinging and shaking, and Phil clutches him back with equal fervor.  For a minute, Clint thinks they might just rub off on each other, supper be damned. He doesn’t really want it to be over that soon, though, and he thinks Phil doesn’t either. They slow the pace of their kisses, letting them taper off gently and ending with their foreheads tipped together, breathing each other’s air. They linger in the embrace for a while, wet and warm, and when they finally break away, they’re both smiling.

“I wasn’t finished,” Phil says, mock-annoyed. 

Clint grins, spreading his hands out a little. “Please, be my guest.”

Phil picks up the spray attachment again and rinses Clint’s top half. They could just step back into the main part of the shower, but there’s something special about doing it like this, about the deliberate way that Phil chases every last soap bubble off of Clint’s skin. When he’s done, Clint leans in to nuzzle at Phil’s smooth cheek.

“Do I get a turn?” he murmurs. He wants to take care of Phil, to touch him all over, revisit the skin he’s just started to memorize.

“I—you don’t have to,” Phil says. “I mean, I can—”

“I want to,” Clint interrupts. “Please?”

“Okay,” Phil says, and it’s ridiculous coming from a man who just asked Clint to hold his asscheeks apart for him, but he looks _shy_. Clint kisses the pink flush on his cheekbone and grabs a fresh washcloth and the shower gel.

He’s tempted to really draw it out, see how much he can tease Phil before he’ll forget himself and push Clint up against the shower wall or something, but he reminds himself that they need to eat. Plus, well, the same reasoning from before is still true. Clint’s pretty sure neither of them have more than one more orgasm in them that night, and he’d personally rather it happen in his nice cozy bed, so he behaves himself. At least, he behaves as far as humanly possible; Clint would defy anyone not to caress at least a little while they’re washing their come out of their lover’s chest hair. Their _fiancé’s_ chest hair, he thinks with a jolt, anticipation curling low in his belly. Not tonight, he thinks, but soon, once they’ve both had a chance to get their equilibrium, he’s going to do something about that whole proposal thing. 

(Phil said yes, after all. Clint’s not forgetting that. Phil’s his, Phil _wants_ to be his, and he’s Phil’s.) 

“I need to make those back rubs a regular thing,” he tells Phil, massaging at the tight muscles of his upper arm and shoulder. They’re a lot better than they had been, but they still need work. Phil’s probably been carrying himself all kinds of odd ways compensating for the injury.

“That sounds perfect,” Phil says, his voice dreamy. Clint moves around to his front to work on the left arm, not wanting to reach for the socket when Phil can’t see him. He starts with the upper arm, the curves of bicep and tricep solid and tense.

“You’ve always had the most amazing hands,” Phil says. He’s watching Clint work, but he keeps his head up where Clint can see. “When you would offer, before, on missions? I would get so conflicted. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to… hide my reaction, to keep it appropriate.”

“You’re a super-spy, Phil,” Clint assures him, moving down to the small attachment muscles at the elbow. “I never had a clue.”

“I never let myself think it when we were together,” Phil says. “But sometimes, when I was alone… I’d think about your hands. The way they might feel, if you—if we…”

Clint leans in, hands still moving, and drops a kiss on the closest part of Phil—the ball of his shoulder. Phil is shaking a little beneath his hands, and he’s humbled afresh by Phil’s courage, the way he just opens his heart up for Clint to see inside. He wants to give him everything, to realize all the daydreams Phil never thought would become real. “We will,” he promises. “We’ll do it all.”

“Your fingers are so beautiful,” Phil continues, voice a little stronger, and Clint snorts.

“You’ve got weird taste,” he observes, moving down carefully to the part of Phil’s forearm that’s left between the elbow and the socket.

“Beautiful,” Phil insists. The tension in his arm is finally releasing, and it seems to loosening his tongue as it goes. “Long and strong and graceful, and those knuckles. I bet they’d feel amazing inside me. Like beads, popping in and out.”

Clint whines, his body clenching at the image, and he can’t hold himself back from rutting his cock a little into the slick skin of Phil’s hip. “Fuck, Phil,” he says. “Are you trying to make my brain explode?” 

“Maybe,” Phil says, sounding delighted and smug. “Is it working?”

“You know it is, you bastard,” Clint says, and curves a hand around the nape of Phil’s neck to pull him into another kiss. “We’ll finish this shower,” he says against Phil’s lips, “and then we’re going to eat something, and then what say we go back to bed and see how my fingers really feel opening you up.”

Phil leans against him, letting their cocks brush, making them both shiver. “Sounds like a plan.”

Clint opts for the faster exit strategy, pulling them back under the main section of the shower to rinse off in the rainfall spray. They step out into cozy warmth, thanks to the floor heaters, and dry off, wrapping themselves in plush, oversized purple bath sheets. Phil opens the case with his hand in it and reaches toward it, then stops.

“Can you help me?” he asks, something tentative and careful in his face.

“Of course,” Clint says, a little concerned. “Do we need to tweak the attachment point design?” He’ll help Phil any way he needs it, but ultimately the hand won’t be very useful if Phil can’t put it on himself. He hopes that he and Tony hadn’t gotten so caught up in lock picks and laser fingers that they overlooked basic functionality like putting the damn thing _on_.

“No,” Phil says, looking down at the case. “No, it’s fine, I just—I thought—” he reaches out as though to pick it up.

“Hey, no,” Clint says. “I’m happy to do it, I just wanted to make sure it was working out okay for you. Here.” He isn’t sure exactly what’s behind Phil’s request, but it feels important, and Clint likes doing things for Phil, likes taking care of him. 

He picks the hand up carefully, cradling it against his chest; it’s cold against his skin, though the goosebumps may be more because Clint is damp and mostly naked. It feels… odd, a bit uncanny, mostly because if he doesn’t look down it feels pretty hand-like, but Clint’s holding it in a way that an attached arm wouldn’t be able to go. 

Phil holds out his arm. Clint fits the end of the prosthesis into the little groove and gives the half-turn that locks it in place. It twitches in his grip, the fingers fluttering in Clint’s hands, and Phil draws a sharp little breath.

“Phil?” 

“I’m okay,” Phil says. “I just—I can feel you.” 

“Yeah?”

Phil nods.

Clint shifts his hold, raises the hand to his lips like he’s in an old movie. He kisses the back of it, the knuckles. He turns it over and kisses the fingertips. “Can you feel this?” he murmurs, into the cup of Phil’s synthetic palm, and Phil shivers underneath Clint’s lips, flesh and electronics both. 

“Yes, Clint,” he says, and Clint kisses him again, and another time. “Yes.”

When Clint looks up again, Phil’s face is—Clint doesn’t know how to describe it, but he thinks it’s good.

“Come on, babe,” he says, with one last brush of his lips over Phil’s hand. “Time for supper.”

“Maybe pants first,” Phil says, smiling a little. 

The dryer beeps in Clint’s ear—while he’s home, all his appliances go to the aids unless he specifies otherwise—and he grins. “I think I can help out with that,” he says. He laces his fingers through Phil’s artificial ones; Phil goes still for a moment, then relaxes, squeezing Clint’s hand gently, just the barest pressure. Clint tugs, and Phil follows him down the hall to the laundry room, where Clint digs out some sweatpants and tees and socks, warm from the dryer.

They dress quickly, tossing their wet towels into the hamper, and Clint gives in to the temptation to sneak an arm around Phil’s waist and wiggle his fingers inside Phil’s pants to stroke the curve of his hip as they walk back to the kitchen.

“So,” he says, “I have…” he runs quickly over the contents of his kitchen, which tend toward stuff that’s easy to make and doesn’t spoil too fast. No tuna—he wants there to be kissing later—and he doesn’t really think that frozen pizza rolls hit quite the right note, but… “grilled cheese and tomato soup? I’ve got the fancy cheese.”

“Sounds great,” Phil says.

“There’s soup in the cabinet above the dishwasher, pick whatever you like,” Clint tells him, and starts stacking sandwich ingredients on the counter.

When he looks over at Phil, he’s pulled several fancy little jars out of the cabinet and is scrutinizing the labels, which say 

 

**That’s My Jam!**

_Organic Artisanal Spreads_

 

“I never knew you were such a chutney enthusiast,” Phil says.

Clint rubs the back of his neck, embarrassed. “Um, not really?” he says. “See, I was over in Crown Heights, a couple months ago, and I kind of got in the middle of this beatdown in an alley? I mean, the guy, he was a big guy, but there were like six bros going after him, it was totally unfair. So I, you know, helped.”

“Of course you did,” Phil says, looking at him with such affection that Clint has to turn away and bend down to pull the griddle out of the cabinet. “What was going on?”

“Oh, uh, Russian mob I think? His uncle’s like some kind of gangster, wanted him to go into the family business,” Clint says. “But, you know, turns out he had this dream to run some kind of relish shop instead. And, I mean, as an Avenger I think I’m probably morally obligated to help people not be criminals, right?”

“I can’t argue with that,” Phil says, fiddling with one of the jars. “I wish I’d been there then. I was needed, at SHIELD. I know that. But I missed—well. We make our choices, and we live with them, I suppose.”

“You’re here now,” Clint says, stepping close and slipping his arm around Phil’s waist, dropping a kiss on his ear. “You’ll be here next time, and you and Nat can yell at me after for not calling you before I tried to break up a fight or stop a mugging or whatever.”

Phil leans into the embrace. “I’m surprised she hasn’t belled you like a cat by now,” he says, his voice lighter. 

Clint laughs. “What’s to say she hasn’t already?”

  “You’d never know, if she didn’t want you to,” Phil agrees, straightening up. “So what finally happened?”

“I think he signed me up for, like, the relish of the month club or something, as a thank you?” Clint puts the griddle on the stove. “I tried to tell him he didn’t need to, but man, even his _mustache_ looked sad, I didn’t have the heart to send it back. I got no idea what to do with all that shit, though.”

“Well, this one would probably be good on the sandwiches,” Phil offers, handing him one of the jars. The letterpress label attached to the neck with twine proclaims it to be “Know Your Onions Jam.”

Clint grins. “See, this is why I need you around,” he says, then clears his throat, because it came out way too sincere for the mood he’d been going for. “Um, did you find a soup you like?”

“I think I’d like to stick with the classics,” Phil says, holding up a can of Campbell’s.

“Classic it is.” Clint puts the soup stuff on one side of the stove and the sandwich stuff on the other, and starts slicing cheese. Phil opens the pop-top can and dumps its contents into the saucepan with a slurp, then fills the can with half-and-half and starts whisking it in.

“You’re getting pretty good with that thing,” Clint observes. “How does it feel?”

Phil shrugs. “Weird,” he says, setting the pan on the stove. “I can feel it, but it’s… distant? Like it’s asleep.” He shakes his head. “The therapy helps, touching things with it. Dr. Cho says it’s about re-training the nerves.” 

Clint can’t help himself; he lays his hand gently over Phil’s metal one, stroking it with his thumb. 

Phil draws a shaky breath, turning his hand to squeeze Clint’s fingers gently. “You want me to start slicing bread?” 

“Yeah, thanks.” 

Phil stands close to Clint, their shoulders brushing as he slices. As soon as Clint is done with the cheese, they start a little assembly line; Clint smears the bread with brie and a dollop of the onion jam, then Phil piles cheese slices on top and puts the sandwiches together. By the time they’re done they have a small mountain of sandwiches, teetering on a plate.

Clint turns on the burners. Once the griddle is hot enough, he throws down some butter and starts laying the sandwiches out in rows. Soon, the kitchen is full of sizzling and the smell of hot butter and melting cheese. Phil leans against the counter, watching Clint cook with a content little smile.

“That smells great,” Phil says, and then his stomach growls, loudly. Clint grins at him.

“Well, we did skip lunch,” he points out.

“I think it was a worthwhile sacrifice.” Phil grins as Clint flips over the sandwiches, revealing their toasty golden bottoms, and gives the gently simmering soup a stir and a few grinds of pepper.

“Can you grab us some plates and bowls?” Clint asks, nodding toward the cabinet where he keeps his dishes. Phil lays out a plate and a bowl each, then opens Clint’s drawers until he locates the soup spoons. Clint peeks at the bottom of a sandwich, and notes with satisfaction that it’s ready.

He doesn’t do anything fancy with the service, just mounds each plate with a pile of sandwiches then divides the soup between their bowls. They settle at Clint’s table with their food and bottles of pop.

It smells delicious and tastes even better—Phil was totally right about the onion jam—and they both wolf down their first few sandwiches with little sound except chewing. It’s great, though; it’s exactly what Clint’s been missing. It’s normal and homely and soft and safe and sweet, comfortable and comforting, perfect. Clint looks over at Phil, cheeks bulging like some kind of chipmunk who hoards cheese instead of nuts, and nudges Phil’s fleece-clad calf with his toe. Phil looks up from the half sandwich he’s dipping into his soup bowl and meets Clint’s eyes. Some of what he’s feeling must be readable on his face, because Phil smiles back, his eyes crinkled and beautiful as forever.

“I fucking love you,” Clint tells him, with his mouth full. Phil lets out a shuddery little sigh.

“Yeah,” he says.”Yeah, I love you, too.”

They finish off their supper in pretty much record time. Clint’s ready to just leave everything in the sink to take care of later, but Phil starts rinsing out the soup bowls and loading his dishwasher, and it’s surprisingly great to watch him do it, do chores around Clint’s house like he belongs there, like he’s not _company_ any more. It feels good, deep down in Clint’s belly. It feels right. They exchange soft buttery kisses across the dishwasher rack, and Clint feels he’s glowing, like he’s one of those candles in a paper bag you see at parties sometimes, all filled up and spilling over with joy. This is what he wanted, what he was missing; this is the empty space in his life starting to be filled.

Heh. Philled.

He watches contentedly as Phil wipes down the counter. He knows that eventually they’re going to have to leave his apartment, that Phil’s hand will be finished and SHIELD will need him back, that giant space lizards or killer mole men will attack the city and Clint will have to go Avenge, but they don’t have to worry about that now, not yet. Now, all they have to do is be here together, to feel around the edges and learn the shape of forever.

“So,” Phil says, once everything is clean and tidy, “what should we do now?”

Clint gives his best impression of Nat’s “you’re kidding me, right?” eyebrow of doom. “I thought we’d covered that already,” he says. “Sounded like you had some pretty solid ideas.” He holds up his hand and wiggles his fingers, feeling stupidly impressed with himself when he sees Phil swallow, hard.

“That—that sounds good,” Phil says.

Clint steps in close, pulling Phil in with a hand on each hip, and kisses him, soft and deep. “Mmm,” he says. “Yeah, I thought so, too.”

He twines his arm around Phil’s waist, and they walk together back to Clint’s bedroom. The bed is in something of a glorious wreck from earlier; fortunately, most of the mess ended up on the flannel sheet, which is easy enough to deal with. Phil moves to the other side of the bed to help him remake it. There’s something about doing this—the two of them making the bed so they can get in it together—that makes his chest feel heavy and warm. It’s simple and domestic and perfect, the kind of thing you do with a partner rather than a date, and Clint finds himself taking extra care with everything, smoothing sheets and plumping pillows. Phil’s doing the same on his side; from the soft, shy looks he keeps throwing Clint’s way, Clint thinks maybe he’s feeling something of the same awe.

Once everything is in place, Clint hesitates a little, not sure whether he should just get naked immediately, or if they should get in bed and make out for a while first. Finally he shrugs, decides to split the difference, and peels his t-shirt off with maybe a tiny bit more flexing than is strictly necessary. Once his head is clear of the fabric, he glances over; Phil is smirking at him, but his eyes are focused and intense as they trace over Clint’s chest.

“Come here,” Phil says, and Clint takes the shortest route, crawling across the bed to him. He sits back on his knees when he gets to the edge, and Phil takes a step closer, so that the fronts of his thighs are touching the mattress. He cups Clint’s face gently in his hands—both hands, one warm and soft and the other cool and hard—and tilts it up. He leans in and kisses Clint, firm but tender, on his forehead, each cheekbone, the tip of his nose, and each corner of his mouth. Clint melts into it, leaning heavily into Phil’s chest and tucking his head into the soft and sweet-smelling crook of Phil’s neck, dusting kisses of his own over Phil’s pulse. Phil wraps his arms around him, and Clint shivers at the cool trace of the metal hand over his back, then jumps when Phil’s flesh hand drops down to squeeze his ass. 

“You wanna do that instead?” Clint asks. “Do me, I mean? Because I would totally be into that, too.”

“No,” Phil says. “I mean—yes, of course, eventually. But I don’t want to wait any longer to feel you inside me.” His arms flex, tightening his hold on Clint. “I’ve been waiting long enough.”

Clint whines, his body flushing hot at the desire in Phil’s voice. He presses harder into Phil’s chest, worming his hands under the waistband of his pants to do a little ass-squeezing of his own. “In that case, allow me to recommend nudity.”

Phil steps back with a final lingering squeeze, and they both peel out of their clothes with more haste than grace. Clint tosses his pants over his shoulder into the hamper and reaches out for Phil, tugging him back over and plastering himself down Phil’s front, which is warm and furry and delightful.

“Mmmm,” he says happily. His cock, which never went down all the way after the shower, is plumping back up, and he gives in to the temptation to hump a little against Phil’s belly. Phil groans deep in his chest—Clint can feel the rumble of it—and hauls Clint into a fierce kiss, nudging his own hardening cock against Clint’s thighs.

Clint lets his hands roam up and down Phil’s back, tracing over the muscles and scars that he’s only just started to learn by touch. When he finally reaches down to take a double handful of Phil’s ass, Phil makes an approving sound into the kiss, both of his arms tightening around Clint in his turn. 

Clint lets himself play for a minute, squeezing and stroking, letting his fingers creep inward to flirt with the edge of Phil’s hole and then pulling back, delighting in the way Phil shivers whenever one of Clint’s calluses catches on his sensitive skin.

A roll of Phil’s hips catches Clint just right, and he gasps into Phil’s mouth, forgetting to move for a second with how good it feels. He could come just like this, he thinks, simple animal rutting without ever getting into bed, and it would feel amazing. 

That’s not what Phil wants right now, though. Phil wants Clint _inside him_.

“Babe,” Clint manages to pull away enough to speak. “Come on, get up here.” He scoots himself backward, toward the spot where the covers are pulled down invitingly, and starts piling all his pillows up in a mound against the wood-and-wrought-iron headboard.

“C’mon,” he says, patting the spot with what he hopes is a seductive smirk (but is more likely a goofy grin.) “Let me give you what you’ve wanted.”

There is really no graceful way to crawl into the middle of a king-sized bed, but Phil somehow manages to look sexy instead of awkward as he arranges himself on Clint’s pillow mountain, then lifts his eyebrows as if to say, _what now?_

Clint knee-walks over to his usual side of the bed and digs the lube out of his bedside table drawer.

“Is this the way you imagined it?” he asks, as Phil spreads his legs to make room for Clint to settle in between them. “On your back, spread out in my bed for me? Or should I turn you over?”

“Like this,” Phil says, wrapping strong legs around Clint and pulling him in, reaching out for him and tugging him down into another kiss. “Stay like this, I want to see it’s you.” 

Clint presses him down into the pillows, letting his weight settle on Phil’s body. Phil’s muscles ripple beneath him, making him groan with how good it feels.

“You just lay back and relax, Phil,” he says. He sits back up slowly, aching with the chill of air coming between their bodies. Phil’s arms slide from around his neck down over his shoulders. Clint lifts his hands, one at a time, kisses them, warm skin and cool metal, then sets them down on the bed. “Let me take care of you.”

“You’ve been doing that for— _oh_ —for a while now,” Phil says, his breath hitching as Clint rubs his hands slowly up the inner planes of his taut thighs, coming together to circle the base of his cock.

“Yeah, and I don’t plan on stopping,” Clint tells him. He presses down below Phil’s balls, feeling for the straining root of his cock. Phil jerks, letting out a sexy little grunt. 

“That okay?” Clint asks, smoothing his other palm over Phil’s thigh.

“Do that again,” Phil orders, and Clint obliges, licking his suddenly dry lips. Phil pushes into his hands, arching his back into the pillows, fingers twisting up in the sheets.

“Fuck, that’s amazing,” Phil says, voice rough.

“And to think I’m just getting started,” Clint promises. He scoots a little closer, hitching Phil’s hips up a little onto his knees, and flips open the lube bottle. He squeezes some of the thick gel onto his finger and holds his hand up so Phil can see. “How did I do it?” he asks. He’s partly trying to be sexy but mostly he just really wants to get this right, to make this perfect for Phil, everything he dreamed. “When you thought about it, did I go slow, did I tease you? Or was I impatient to get inside?” 

Phil’s chest rises and falls on a deep breath, and his eyes go dark. “Slow,” he says. “Make it last.”

So Clint is maybe kind of an expert at doing this to himself, plus he has excellent peripheral vision, which means that he doesn’t have to look away and miss the shiver that races over Phil’s body when Clint brushes the lube over his hole, circling his fingertip gently around the puckered edge. Phil’s breath quickens as Clint gradually increases the pressure; Clint keeps it up until Phil starts pushing back into him.

“I didn’t say— _tease_ me,” Phil pants.

“I’m enjoying the moment,” Clint tells him, pulling his hand back to add more lube before he goes back to what he was doing before. He means it to sound kind of flip, but it comes out sincere. It’s true, is the thing; Phil feels amazing under his fingers. He’s trying to hold still, tension running through his muscles, but still making these tiny little cut-off movements, pressing into Clint’s touch like he’s desperate for it, and it’s hot like fucking lava. Clint reaches out his hand, wanting to give Phil something to hold on to, and Phil gropes around for it without looking away from Clint’s face, finally catching hold and curling metal fingers around Clint’s wrist.

“Well, enjoy it from a couple inches further in,” Phil says, and he sounds snippy and yet turned on, and it’s beautiful. Clint circles his fingers once more, gauging; Phil’s hole has relaxed under all the attention, twitching and eager beneath his touch. Clint crosses his first two fingers—for luck, he thinks suddenly, for getting _incredibly fucking lucky_ —and pushes them straight back into Phil in one slow, inexorable slide. 

Phil makes an amazing noise, a long throaty moan that goes straight to Clint’s balls, and shoves himself down onto Clint’s fingers, his powerful thighs tensing around Clint’s hips. His fingers tighten like a manacle around Clint’s wrist, and Clint can’t hold back a little gasp at the sudden pressure.

“Sorry! Shit, I’m sorry, are you all right?” Phil drops his hand like it’s burning him, eyes darting from Clint’s face to his arm in concern.

“Hey, hey, it’s fine, you just startled me,” Clint says. He reaches out for Phil’s hand again, but Phil pulls it back, shoving it under his hip.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says, “I’m fine, just—keep going.”

“Whatever you want,” Clint promises. He crooks his fingers, searching for and finding the nub of Phil’s prostate, rubbing just barely over it until the worried scrunch of Phil’s forehead smooths out into pleasure. Then he gets down to business.

He bends his fingers a little, trying to make his knuckles as bumpy as possible, and pumps them slowly in and out of Phil’s body, reveling in the clench and flutter of muscle around him.

“Is this how you thought it would feel?” he demands. His skin feels tight all over, shivering at every sensation. They aren’t touching enough, not close enough for his taste—he wants to be wrapped in Phil, surrounded entirely—but this isn’t _for_ him, it’s for Phil, Phil’s fantasy. “Is this right?”

Phil’s watching him, his attention so heavy Clint can almost feel it in the air. Every time Clint’s knuckles push past Phil’s entrance, his hips lift into the motion and he bites his lip a little. His chest is dewed with sweat, heaving like Phil’s been running hard. “Better,” he says, and his voice is clipped and tight with lust, amazing. “Tried it with— _oh_ —my fingers. Not enough.” Clint twists on the next thrust, and Phil sucks in a giant breath, back arching. 

“Yeah?” Clint asks. “Tell me more.”

“Got a toy,” Phil admits. “Closer, but not—nngh—not alive. Not _you._ ” 

“That is so fucking hot,” Clint says, breathless. He scissors his fingers, and Phil just _opens_ for him, muscles gone buttery with the long massage, face slack with pleasure. He draws back, just for a moment, and comes back with three fingers, making them a thick wedge and fucking into Phil, making sure his knuckles catch the rim and his fingertips rub past Phil’s prostate on each stroke, over and over until Phil’s cock is wet and red, jerking with every graze.

“Clint,” Phil says. _“Fuck me.”_

Clint swallows hard, and fumbles for the lube without taking his eyes off Phil’s face. He glops some out onto his palm and slicks up his cock, his breath punching out of him as his own touch reminds him of how hard he is, how much he wants. He grips onto Phil’s hip with one hand and guides himself inside.

They both groan as he breaches the ring of muscle, and Clint bites down on his tongue to try to keep from just coming right there like a teenager before he’s even all the way in. He tries to say something, but it’s half “Phil” and half “fuck” and half he doesn’t even know what, and it trails off into some kind of formless noise as all available brain cells are dedicated to processing the hot-silk grip of Phil’s body around Clint’s cock as he sinks in and in and _in_.

He goes still for a moment when he bottoms out. Phil’s eyes are closed, but when Clint stops moving he opens them again, meeting Clint’s gaze. It’s almost terrifyingly intimate, being buried inside him—bare inside him—and looking at him like that, those sharp eyes seeing him, knowing him. Clint’s never done anything quite like this before.

“I love you,” he blurts, and Phil shivers around him.

“I love you too,” Phil says, voice raspy and breathless, and all of a sudden it’s too big, the moment too much to bear; Clint has to move, so he pulls his hips back and drives back into Phil so hard he pushes him back several inches into the pillows.

“Yes,” Phil hisses, arching into him. His hands scrabble for purchase on the bed before he raises his arms and grasps onto the slats of the headboard, bracing himself, the muscles in his arms bulging as he rides Clint’s motion like a wave. 

“Harder,” he says, his breath forcing out of him in sharp grunts with Clint’s movements. “Make me— _feel_ it. I want—feel it for _days_.”

Clint’s lost, helpless to do anything but obey, and he tightens his hold on Phil’s hips and really puts his back into it, fucking into Phil as hard as he can, trying for that angle that makes Phil moan and writhe, makes him push back into Clint’s thrusts so that their skin smacks together. Everything is bright and hot, ecstasy buzzing through him, building and building until he feels like his _teeth_ are going to come, his elbows, his hair. He’s holding on by a sliver, but he can’t let go, not yet.

Phil’s cock is slapping against his belly with each thrust, shiny-wet and flushed dark; Clint lets go of Phil’s hip with his still-slick hand and reaches for it. Phil whines in his throat when Clint’s fingers wrap around him, just on the edge of Clint’s hearing.

“That’s it, baby,” Clint says, stripping Phil’s cock roughly in time with his thrusts. “I wanna feel you, come on, Phil, come for me, come around my cock, fuck, please, I want it, want you, I— _Phil_ —” he breaks off as Phil comes, finally, with a rough cry, jerking and shaking around Clint and in his hand, and Clint groans as he shoves himself forward into Phil’s clenching heat once, twice, three times, and tips over into white-hot oblivion, so intense he thinks his hearing aids might be shorting out.

He’s still trying to regain the ability to see straight when he feels Phil tense underneath him, and he looks up sharply from where he’s half-collapsed on Phil’s chest. “You okay?”

“I—sorry,” Phil says, and, oh, apparently that wasn’t some kind of audio feedback a minute ago. That was Phil breaking one of the slats of Clint’s headboard clean off with his robot hand.

“I think that means I win at sex,” he says, stupidly, then winces at himself for being too come-drunk to be sensitive. It’s okay, though, because Phil snorts a little laugh, looking from Clint to the mangled piece of wood and metal ruefully.

“I can’t argue with that,” he says. “I’ll have to talk to Tony about some kind of pressure failsafe, though. This could have been—”

“No, it couldn’t have,” Clint interrupts, wanting to cut that train of thought off before it left the station. “Look, when you were touching me before you stopped yourself before you hurt me.”

Phil looks skeptically down at Clint’s hand on his chest, which, okay, does kind of have a ring of red around it in the approximate shape of Phil’s hand.

“That’s nothing,” Clint tells him, kissing the closest bit of his skin. “Little bruise, maybe, but nothing serious, Plus, it was seriously fucking hot, making you lose it like that. But even then, you let go before you did any real damage.” 

He hauls himself upright and pulls out, hissing a little at the sensation on his over-sensitized skin, then gently takes the broken slat away from Phil and tosses it into the corner. “Hey,” he says, twining his fingers with Phil’s metal ones and lifting Phil’s hand to his lips. “Don’t worry about it, babe. You’re not gonna hurt me.”

“I never want to, but I have,” Phil says, too serious. “I need to do what I can to keep it from happening. It’s fine most of the time, but I shouldn’t wear the hand during sex again, or while I’m sleeping, just in case. Sometimes I… dream.”

Clint nods. He understands, and honestly he has no desire to get choked out in some kind of nightmare-induced murder hand incident; his life is going way too well right now, no need to tempt fate. “I’ll go get your charger.”

He clambers out of bed on shaky legs, and retrieves Phil’s case and a couple wet washcloths from the bathroom, pausing to give his own sticky groin a quick scrub. There’s plenty of space on the other nightstand—Phil’s nightstand, now, if all goes well—for the charging station, and he sets it up quickly before crawling back into bed and tucking himself up close to Phil’s side. He wipes Phil off with gentle strokes of the warm cloth, kissing his shoulder when he shivers with sensitivity, then tosses the cloth into the hamper with a splat.

“Showoff,” Phil murmurs into his hair.

“Gotta impress you,” Clint says, snuggling a little closer and kissing his favorite spot on Phil’s collarbone. “Keep you coming back.”

“You don’t have to do anything to do that,” Phil says, and there’s a little catch in his voice that makes Clint’s chest swell with some kind of big emotion.

“Sleep with me,” Clint says. “Stay here.” He means _tonight;_ he means _this weekend;_ he means _forever,_ though he knows there’s a lot standing in the way. He hopes that Phil can hear it all in his voice. They’ll talk about it soon, but not now. Not quite yet.

“As long as I can,” Phil promises, his flesh arm tightening around Clint’s shoulders.

They lay there for a while, drowsing and clinging together, until the air conditioning kicks on and makes them both shiver and sit up.

“Help me off with this?” Phil asks, holding out his left hand. Clint takes it and kisses the back again, then grasps it firmly. 

“Ready?” he asks, and Phil nods. Clint presses the hidden release—they’ll put a biometric lock on the final field models, for security—and twists, lifting the hand away from Phil and setting it carefully on its cradle. Then he turns back, meeting Phil’s intense gaze, and leans over to kiss Phil’s arm. He starts at the socket, cool metal beneath his lips, then the seam between metal and flesh, then the freckled curves of bicep and shoulder, kissing his way up Phil’s arm to his neck like Gomez Addams, ending with a soft nip to Phil’s earlobe. Phil sighs, relaxing against him at last, and Clint redistributes the pillow mountain and pulls up the covers, settling them down into bed. Phil pulls him into the lee of his chest, wrapping his intact arm around Clint’s chest, palm resting over his heart. His abbreviated left arm is shoved up under the pillows, somewhere under Clint’s head.

“Well, one advantage,” he says, thoughtfully. “At least we don’t have to figure out what to do with my other arm.”

Clint huffs a laugh. “You are the _worst,_ ” he says, affectionately.

Phil kisses the back of his neck as FRIDAY dims the lights. “That’s why you love me,” he says, and his voice is almost sure.

“ _Yes,”_ Clint agrees, and reaches up to squeeze Phil’s hand, pulling it up to his lips for another kiss. “So much.” 

Heavy with endorphins and stupid with love, Clint doesn’t fall asleep so much as float there.

 

The next morning, there’s another robot. Or, well, maybe it’s the same robot again, it’s hard to tell with the little ones.

“Do you have a name?” he asks it, because if the poor thing has to run Tony’s errands the least Clint can do is be polite.

“Mr. Stark calls it ‘Handsy,’” FRIDAY says.

Clint shrugs. “Thanks, Handsy,” he says, taking the crate. The robot chirps happily and trundles away back down the hall, and Clint goes back inside wondering whether the fact that he isn’t disturbed by this interaction makes his life awesome or horrifying.

“What was all that about?” Phil asks, emerging from the bedroom with damp, tousled hair and a pink flush all over his face and down into the vee of Clint’s bathrobe.

_Awesome,_ Clint decides. _Definitely awesome._

“Tony sent us up something,” he tells Phil, pulling the note off the top of the crate, where it appears to be affixed with some kind of industrial adhesive. “I’m not spying on you,” he reads aloud.

“Oh, this is promising,” Phil snorts.

Clint grins. “But,” he continues, “I did tell FRIDAY to make sure everything was timed so it would be ready when you got up. Have fun and remember to hydrate.” He undoes the latch of the crate.

“Ooooh, a whipped cream gun!” he eyes Phil speculatively.

“Absolutely not,” Phil says.

“Awww, Phil.”

“Two words, Barton: chest hair.”

“Well, when you put it that way.” Clint snickers, setting the whipped cream gun aside and digging into the rest of their bounty. The crate has a hot and a cold section, and was probably invented to transport, like, vibranium or nuclear missiles or human kidneys or some important shit like that, but it does make a hell of a picnic hamper. Clint pulls out two more whipped cream guns (chocolate, vanilla, and sweet cream, as the labels helpfully inform him), a huge container of mixed berries and another of pineapple, a gallon of fresh-squeezed OJ and another of tomato juice, and a funny little tackle-box-looking case filled with diced cocktail fixings and wee bottles of booze labeled “Bloody Mary Bar.” The hot side turned out to contain a dozen fresh croissants and an assortment of bacon, eggs, cheese, and ham.

“What’s the other box?” Phil asks, as Clint spreads breakfast—well, technically, brunch—out on the table.

“No idea,” he says. Phil pulls the final box out and opens it.

“…ah.”

“What?” Clint comes over and peers over Phil’s shoulder. “Oh.” It’s a giant bottle of lube and a remote-controlled vibrator. “Practical,” he observes. “C’mon, Phil, let’s eat. We gotta keep up our strength, after all.”

Phil visibly bites back some comment, sets the sex aids aside, and follows.

Halfway into their meal, Clint has a thought. He digs his phone out of the pocket of his sweats and scootches his chair closer to Phil, throwing his arm around Phil’s bathrobe-clad shoulders. “Hey, hold up your croissant and smile,” he tells him, pulling up the camera app. “We gotta tell Nat it all worked out. Oh, and Kate! That she was right about sexy breakfast.”

Phil pauses, then shrugs. “Sure,” he says. “Might as well send it to Daisy, too; you have no idea how much she’s been texting me about you.” He holds up his half-eaten croissant while Clint kisses the smile lines in his cheek, once for the selfie and then another time just because they’re so kissable. He opens the messaging app and then has to stop a minute to grin dopily at their picture. They look great together, relaxed and in love. They look _happy_.

He sends the picture to Natasha, where she’ll see it as soon as she gets back on-grid, to Daisy, with the caption “don’t worry I’ll take good care of him,” and then to Kate, adding the note “OK well I guess you were right about sexy breakfast then. :)”

The phone starts buzzing with responses almost immediately. 

“What did they say?” Phil asks. 

“Daisy said ‘OMG, WTG, heart-eyes emoji,’” he says, swiping through his messages. “Kate said ‘I told you. Get it, Hawkeye, exclamation point, exclamation point, party horn, eggplant, eggplant, thumbs-up emoji’? What does that even—why are you laughing? Phil?”

 

It turns out the eggplant means a dick.

 

Tony sends Handsy up to Clint’s apartment every twelve hours until Saturday morning. Each delivery contains an assortment of food, a bottle of top-shelf booze, an economy-sized bottle of lube, and a sex toy.

Clint hadn’t realized that silicone came in that many different shades of purple.

Phil rolls his eyes, but it really is pretty convenient not having to leave the apartment to eat, and Clint’s not going to have to buy lube for about a year, so he’s calling it a win.

“He’s trying to be nice,” he explains to Phil Friday night. The last few days have been something of a marathon of sex and talking about feelings, and they’re finally settling down to something a little more normal. It’s amazing and strange, the way they’re slotting together, in life as well as in bed; Clint knows that the real test will come when they emerge from his apartment and pick up their lives again, but he finds himself unusually optimistic about how it’s all going to go. The main issues they still have to resolve are all logistical, and honestly, between them they’ve got both comprehensive planning and wild-ass improvisation covered; logistics don’t stand a chance.

For now, though, it’s enough for him to just be in the moment, enjoying the tail end of their little bubble of privacy. They’re cuddling on the couch half-watching something. Clint’s sprawled out partially on top of Phil, with his head in the hollow of Phil’s shoulder so Phil’s neck is within easy kissing distance. Phil’s good hand is carding lazily through Clint’s hair, and Clint’s so happy he could pop. “It’s just, to be nice he has to be an asshole about it.”

“I’m aware of the phenomenon,” Phil says. He makes a good run at his dry-as-dust snarky tone, but it’s ruined by the soft note that sneaks in whenever he talks to Clint now, and by the way he kisses Clint’s temple right after.

“We should totally do the dinner thing with him and Pepper, though.”

“That sounds nice,” Phil agrees. “Later, though.”

“Yeah,” Clint says. He sneaks a hand down into Phil’s lap. “Later.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go! I don't know the exact date but hopefully 3-4 weeks. Not officially titled yet but the unofficial title is ROBOT HAND PORN AT LAST.
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone for your comments and kudos!


	9. Art by Snow: Passive Aggressive Donuts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gorgeous illustration of Chapter Four from the amazing Snow!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bonus to tide you over while you wait for Chapter 9 - this beautiful illustration of the Passive-Aggressive Donut Incident.

I commissioned this illustration from the amazing [zappedbysnow](http://archiveofourown.org/users/zappedbysnow/pseuds/zappedbysnow). Isn't it amazing? Let her know how great her work is!!

If you would like to commission your own art from Snow (and you should! LOOK how gorgeous!), the information is here: [Commissions Open!](http://snowzapped.tumblr.com/post/142158194475/commissions-open?soc_src=mail&soc_trk=ma)


	10. Robot Hand Porn At Last

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is going to be his tombstone, Clint thinks. RIP Clint Barton: he died of sex.
> 
> (But he died happy.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're on the home stretch now! Just one more epilogue to go.
> 
> As always, this story would not exist without my tremendous betas, who never let me get away with "close enough." My eternal gratitude.

Clint asks Phil to move in with him Saturday afternoon, on the way back from picking up the Mark II. 

He doesn’t mean to do it then. He’d been _planning_ to do it over dinner, maybe pull out some candles or some shit, make it romantic; he could do romantic. He’s determined to show Phil that he can be a good boyfriend like a normal person, without any creepy lurking or spontaneous overshares. He’d started out well, managing the whole arm fitting without doing anything more interesting than hover at Phil’s elbow the whole time (Tony, who had apparently decided their “epic superhero romance” was better than anything on Netflix, was disappointed). Maybe he’d gotten overconfident, though, walking beside Phil as he turned and flexed his new hand. He was imagining what he would say that night, how he would refill Phil’s wineglass and lean in close and kiss his temple and whisper—

“Let’s go get your stuff.” 

Phil looks away from his fingers, startled. “I’m sorry, what?”

Clint groans, embarrassed; that was the next sentence in the conversation he’d been practicing in his head, but it wasn’t supposed to be the opener. So much for romance. “I mean, um. I’d really like it if you stayed with me, the rest of the time you’re here. There’s plenty of room; I have an office set up but I never use it, and if you don’t—if you’re not ready to always—there’s a guest room you can have, it’s totally cool. I don’t expect anything, just… I want you around, you know? I really—I would be really happy if you—but, I mean, only if it will make you happy too, of course.”

“Clint.” Phil lays a steadying hand in the middle of Clint’s chest, and Clint falls silent. He’s not worried, exactly—Phil has been very clear all weekend about how he feels about Clint—but he can’t help feeling like he’s been fucking things up with Phil for years, and he wants to start getting it right now that he knows what’s going on. 

Phil smiles at him, his beautiful eyes crinkling in that way that makes Clint want to kiss him. (Well. One of the ways that makes Clint want to kiss him.) “Let’s go get my stuff.”

They go to get Phil’s stuff. Clint helps with the sweep as Phil is packing up his secured SHIELD equipment, going through all the drawers to make sure nothing gets left behind. When he finally gets to the bedside table, wrapping up some extra phone chargers, he finds the assortment of items that Phil has kept beside his bed for as long as Clint has known him; a travel pack of kleenex, a microfiber cloth to clean his glasses, and his latest book. 

Phil reads fast and he reads pretty much anything; Clint’s always been fascinated by his choices. Phil’s equally likely to pick up something thick and serious about, like, the economy as he is an airport bookshop bestseller or a battered genre paperback from a thrift shop, and he’s always been willing to tell Clint what it is he likes about whatever he’s reading. Clint has many happy memories of what should have been dull nights on stakeout or in a safehouse, the two of them and Nat passing the time talking about robots, or cheese, or Carl Sagan. 

The current selection is called _Stiff_ , and when he flips it over to skim the blurb on the back, a piece of paper falls out and flutters to the floor.

“Shit,” Clint mutters. He may have grown up in the circus, but he has better manners than to mess with someone else’s book and lose their place. He bends to get Phil’s bookmark off the floor and freezes when he gets a better look, the book falling out of his suddenly nerveless fingers to the bed.

It’s the receipt from the coffee shop. Clint knew that he’d been a little excessive, but the detailed instructions—shit, _three paragraphs_ of instructions—printed out on the narrow receipt paper make the whole thing so long that Phil had to fold it up several times so it would fit inside his book. That, and a timestamp in the middle of the night? Christ, Clint was pathetic.

“I think that’s everything,” Phil says, walking in from the other room. “If you can grab—Clint?” 

“I lost your place,” Clint blurts, fighting the urge to crumple the receipt up and throw it away. That would just draw attention to it, on the off chance that Phil had just shoved the nearest piece of paper into the book without reading it. “I’m sorry.”

Phil’s eyes flick down, taking in the book and the receipt in Clint’s hand. “Ah.” He looks a little sheepish. 

“That wasn’t as weird as it looks,” Clint says. “I mean. I just wanted—”

“To take care of me,” Phil says. “I know. That’s why I kept it. It… helped. I had been so worried that we wouldn’t—that you wouldn’t—that things wouldn’t work out. And then you…”

“Tackled you in the hall?” Clint suggests. “Crashed your breakfast meeting?”

“Reached out. Took a chance. Showed that you still cared.” He takes the receipt from Clint’s hand, smoothing it out with a gesture that looks well-practiced. A stray sentence catches Clint’s eye: _cut into quarters vertically so the pieces are long rectangles not squares._ “This was… a reminder, I guess. That maybe it wasn’t futile to hope.”

Clint steps forward into Phil’s arms, the paper in Phil’s hand crinkling against his back, and kisses him. “Keep it, if you want it,” he tells Phil. “But I hope you don’t need the reminder anymore.”

Phil’s face goes soft and sweet, and he kisses Clint back for a long moment. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s get the rest of this and go home.” He folds the receipt back inside the book before throwing it into his overnight bag to take upstairs.

When they get back to Clint’s apartment, Phil walks right back to Clint’s bedroom with his suitcases. “Think you can find me a drawer and a bit of closet room?” he asks, and Clint cracks up laughing. Tony designed their closets based on his own wardrobe, so Clint has an entire empty chest of drawers and most of a walk-in closet free.

“I think I can squeeze you in,” he says.

If he sneaks into the closet later while he’s putting the laundry away just to bask in the sight of Phil’s suit hanging up neatly next to Clint’s favorite hoodie, well. FRIDAY won’t tell.

 

_Two Days Later_

 

“What do you mean, you _broke_ it?” Tony’s staring down at the lab bench, where the Mark II is smoking gently on a bed of insulating foam.

Clint shifts his weight, avoiding meeting anyone’s eyes. He feels like it’s written all over his face.

“I mean I broke it, Stark,” Phil says. He’s stone-faced, his best “that statue looked like that when we got there, sir” tone in play. You’d never know that less than twelve hours ago he’d been… well. Decidedly less composed, shall we say. Clint rolls his shoulders, reveling in the burn of well-used muscle and the faint sting of a bite mark riding just under his collar. Phil looks at him, and there’s a certain deliberation to the way he’s moving that makes Clint hot all over. 

“The fine-motor integration worked very well, though,” Phil adds.

Tony’s eyes shoot from Phil to Clint and back again. “I’m… not going to ask,” he says. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I _want_ to ask, because this thing should have been able to function in hard vacuum or at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, but I think for once in my life I actually don’t want to know.” He pokes the hand with a screwdriver and yelps when it throws off a shower of sparks. “I have to say, though, a number of stories I heard at your wake are looking increasingly plausible.”

Phil just smiles, a little twitch of his lips like a cat with a canary feather still poking out of its mouth, and Clint grins at Tony, smug, and waggles his eyebrows.

Tony groans. “Go away,” he says. “Go break some other part of my property with your fuck shenanigans while I try to figure out how to salvage your revolutionary robotic prosthesis.”

“Thanks, Tony,” Clint tells him, putting a little aw-shucks tone into his voice as he hauls Phil towards the door. “You’re a real pal.”

They get a message later that night saying that the Mark II isn’t salvageable, but the Mark III is in the fabricators and will be ready in the morning. It’s fine; they’re honestly a little fucked-out, and they’re in the middle of a _Star Wars_ binge.

They settle on the couch after supper to pull up _Empire Strikes Back_. Phil settles into the corner with his feet up on the coffee table, and tugs Clint gently down to lie on his side with his head pillowed on Phil’s thigh. Clint snugs the fingers of one hand under Phil’s leg and sighs happily as the blare of trumpets signals the start of the movie. 

He pays as much attention to Phil as to the TV; Phil has seen this movie a million times, but he still gets really into it, tensing at the exciting parts and laughing where it’s funny. He rests his good hand on top of Clint, idly stroking over his shoulder and arm, tracing fingers around Clint’s ear, petting through his hair. It could get sexy pretty easily, but Phil keeps the pressure just at the right level to be soothing instead of teasing, so instead it just feels… loving.

The _Millennium Falcon_ is pulling into Bespin when FRIDAY pauses the feed. “Excuse me, Agent Barton,” she says. “Agent Romanoff has returned to the Tower, and would like to know if this would be a convenient time for a visit.”

Clint blinks, a little thrown by the request; he and Natasha haven’t been on _ask-before-coming-over_ terms in many years. He looks up to see if Phil knows what’s up, but he looks just as puzzled as Clint feels.

“Sure, FRIDAY, tell her to come on over,” Clint says. Five seconds later, the door swings open and Nat walks in, wearing yoga pants and an oversized sweatshirt, her post-mission-decompression clothes.

“Hey, Nat,” Clint says. She looks okay, he thinks. “What’s up? You know you’ve got full access, you don’t have to ring the bell. AI. Whatever.”

She shoots them an unimpressed look. “I just spent half an hour listening to Tony ranting about your dick and the Marianas Trench,” she says. “The phrase ‘fuck shenanigans’ was involved. I’m happy for you both, but there are some things I don’t need to witness.”

“…oh. Yeah, okay, point,” Clint says.

“We do try to be conscientious about setting our status with FRIDAY,” Phil offers.

“And I appreciate that.” She smiles, looking at the way Phil’s hand is still tangled in Clint’s hair. “I just wanted you to _talk_ to the man, Barton,” she teases. “You always have to overcompensate.”

He huffs a laugh, half-buried in Phil’s thigh. “Well, you know, I had an epiphany,” he says. 

“Better late than never, I suppose.” She tilts her head a little, looking at them, a tiny smile curving her lips. “Do you know, back at SHIELD, I actually thought that the two of you had mutually decided not to act on your feelings?”

Clint stares at her. “What?”

“You were obviously in love with one another,” she says, waving a dismissive hand. “And it wasn’t a bad breakup or anything like that; you weren’t angry or bitter, and neither of you were making any serious efforts to commit yourselves elsewhere. I just assumed that you were prioritizing the mission over your personal desires. I thought it was admirably professional of you.”

“You know, when I said you knew me better than I knew myself, I thought I was exaggerating for dramatic effect,” Clint manages. 

“I didn’t,” Phil said. “But even so.”

She laughs, the effervescent little giggle she allows very few people to hear. “Someday, you’ll learn.”

“So when did you figure out what was really going on?” Clint asks. “I’m assuming sometime before the hug offensive?”

“When Phil came back to the Tower.” She shrugs. “The way you reacted… I’m not saying it would have been easier for you, if you’d known you were in love with him, but I think you’d have taken things differently.”

“Yeah, probably.” Clint squeezes Phil’s thigh, a little hug, and Phil runs his fingers through Clint’s hair soothingly.

“Have you eaten?” Phil asks after a moment. “There’s some lasagna left, you’re welcome to it.”

“I wouldn’t want to intrude on the honeymoon,” Nat says, but she looks tired, which would usually mean she needs some couch time.

“It’s not our honeymoon yet,” Clint says, and can’t help grinning into Phil’s leg, because they’re going to have a honeymoon, sometime. From the possessive way Phil’s hand tightens on the back of Clint’s neck, he thinks Phil’s pretty happy about the idea, too. “Grab a plate and c’mere, we’re watching _Star Wars_.”

They reshuffle while she’s in the kitchen, Clint taking the opportunity to grab drink refills and hit the head. He plops down at the other end of the couch from Phil, leaving a Nat-sized spot between them.

“Worst mission gets the middle,” Clint says, as she comes out with her reheated pasta. That was always the rule.

For a second she looks like she’s going to protest, then Phil smiles at her and makes a little “be my guest” sort of gesture, and she shakes her head and takes her spot between them. Clint throws his arm along the back of the couch, and with Nat’s messy hair brushing the inside of his elbow and the back of Phil’s neck under his hand, all is right with the world.

  By about half an hour into _Return of the Jedi_ , she’s totally relaxed, the last of the mission adrenaline drained away. She shifts around until she’s laying across them both, pulling a throw pillow into Clint’s lap and wriggling around until she’s comfortable. Clint looks over to see Phil pulling the afghan down from the back of Clint’s couch, tucking it around her bare toes. Clint rests his hand on Nat’s side, and Phil puts his own hand beside it, touching them both.

When the movie ends and she gets up to leave, Natasha’s face is smooth and her body easy. It does Clint good to see it, like everything important is where it should be for once.

“Let me know when you get up tomorrow, we can do brunch,” Clint tells her.

“Only if there’s cinnamon rolls,” she says, looking at Phil.

“Clint’s got a stand mixer for some reason,” Phil says. “I think I can manage cinnamon rolls.” 

“It came with the apartment,” Clint says. He gathers Nat up in a hug, kissing the top of her head, then passes her to Phil to hug. “See you in the morning.”

“See you,” she says, turning her face so her words won’t be muffled in Phil’s shoulder. 

Clint sighs in contentment as the door closes behind her. Phil comes up next to him and slips his arm around Clint’s waist, the press of the metal socket already a familiar and treasured sensation. “Come on, you,” Phil says, kissing the tip of Clint’s ear. “Let’s go to bed.”

They both wake up early the next morning, finally caught up on their sleep debts for once, and Clint uses his masculine wiles to lure Phil into an extra half-hour of drowsy making out that culminates in a mutually satisfying handjob exchange in the shower. (They really need to start keeping lube in there; Clint’s pretty sure at least one of the bottles Tony sent is waterproof.)

After they get dressed, they start the food. They’re going to make quiche, because Nat loves fancy shit like that, so Clint starts browning bacon and dicing tomatoes while Phil proofs the yeast for the cinnamon rolls.

“I always loved cooking with you,” Clint says. “Really, it should have told me something, how much I liked it. I think because it always seemed like such a family thing to do, you know? Even the last time.” Clint smiles wistfully at the memory, stirring the bacon in the pan. “Remember, in Milwaukee the week before Thor came, when I blew up the pressure cooker? It was such a disaster, but you handled it like a total badass. I couldn’t stop telling people all about it; Nat says I nearly swooned.” He chuckles. “I should have known right then I wanted to be more than your friend. Guess I just wasn’t paying attention.” He looks over, wanting to share a laugh at the memory, but Phil’s face is pale and set, whisk motionless in his hand. Clint’s stomach lurches.

“Phil?”

Phil scrubs his hand through his hair, shoulders moving in a sigh. “Sorry,” he says. “Sorry.”

“Did I…” Clint trails off, trying to figure out how to say “remind you of something horrible” without using any words related to memory.

Phil turns to the cabinets, setting out his ingredients while his yeast starts bubbling. “Skye—Daisy gave you the file about the theta wave machine,” he says, speaking clearly but not looking in Clint’s direction.

“Yeah.” Clint pulls out a package of pie crust dough and starts getting the pie pans ready, carefully not looking in Phil’s direction (though he’s keeping an eye on him in his peripheral vision.)

“It was effective, but not—it didn’t bring everything back,” Phil says. “There are still some… holes.”

Clint goes still, cold terror sweeping over him. “Yeah?” he says, carefully.

“Brains aren’t like hard drives,” Phil says. He fiddles with his _mise en place_ , measuring cups of flour and ramekins of spices. His back is as straight as a plank, like he’s bracing himself for something. “People’s memories aren’t linear; they’re more like webs, all interconnected. Most of the… subjects got a full memory replacement, carefully designed to avoid anything that might trigger the old memories to start breaking through. But it’s hard to be a SHIELD agent if you forget everything you know about global intelligence.”

“Fury needed you back in the game.” Clint picks up a circle of dough and starts pressing it into the pan, trying to swallow down the ache in his throat. Of course he doesn’t wish it hadn’t happened—if it hadn’t happened, Phil would be _dead_ —but he hates how much Phil suffered.

“They tried to t-take just enough that I would forget TAHITI and remember everything else.” Phil’s voice is thin and unsteady. Clint wants to drop what he’s doing and run to him, fold him into his arms and stand between him and the world, but he knows from experience that nobody can protect you from horrors that live inside your own mind. 

He tries to keep his voice level. “Did it work?”

“For a while.” Phil pulls over a mixing bowl and starts combining his dry ingredients. “But the process was incomplete. I could tell that something was off; I couldn’t stop worrying at it. I didn’t _want_ to stop.”

“The disadvantage of letting you keep your super-spy instincts.” Clint picks up a fork and starts crimping the edge of the piecrust.

“Things started bleeding through.” Phil’s spine stays stiff as he starts combining liquid and flour. “In dreams, first. And then sometimes even when I was awake. I thought—I don’t know what I thought. I was afraid to let myself think anything. Melinda tried to convince me it was stress from my _near-death experience.”_  

Clint winces. He knows that May was trying to keep Phil from losing it, but for an elite spy, she’s never been a terribly convincing liar. It hurts to think of how helpless Phil must have felt, how alone.

“I’m so sorry you went through that,” he says quietly. “I wish—I know why Fury wanted it secret, and I know why you didn’t say anything, I’m not arguing that. But I wish I could have been there for you then.”

Phil chuckles a little, a rusty, sardonic sound. “I do, too,” he says. “You know, I used to daydream about it?”

“Yeah?”

“When I started… carving,” Phil says. He pokes at his dough. “It—I’ve never felt a compulsion like that before. Until I gave in, it would… consume me. No matter what I tried, the obsession would grow and grow until I couldn’t think about anything else. But once I gave in, I could think again.”

“I know a little bit about that,” Clint says, starting to crack eggs into a bowl. “When I was… when Loki had me. I didn’t feel any different from usual. I was still me, I just… wanted what he wanted me to want, never questioned it. It was a hell of a mindfuck, after, but at least I didn’t know what was happening at the time.” He takes a deep breath, tries to put all his concern and care in his voice. “You must have been so afraid.”

“I was fucking terrified.” Phil starts the mixer kneading the dough, then crosses the kitchen to stand next to Clint, watching as he beats in spices and cream for the quiche filling. His breath is speeding up. “Afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop. Afraid Melinda wouldn’t be willing—or able—to put me down, if it came to that. Afraid I’d hurt someone, that I’d fail my people, fail SHIELD.” Where their arms brush, Clint can feel Phil’s muscles coiled with tension. He wants to touch Phil, to comfort him, but Phil is still holding himself apart, his face distant as he forces out his words. Clint leans a little, just enough to make sure Phil can feel him. After a moment, Phil presses back, letting out a deep breath.

“I had this… fantasy, I guess,” he says slowly. “That you would find out what happened somehow, maybe Stark’s AI would get into the files or something, and the Avengers would come for me. Contain me, so I’d be safe, so I couldn’t hurt anyone. And maybe you’d be able to fix me, and maybe you wouldn’t, but at least I would know I couldn’t do any damage. And I’d start thinking, maybe at least when you and Tasha saw what had happened, you’d forgive me. Maybe you’d come visit me, wherever I was kept.” His voice shakes. “When it would get bad, I’d think about it. About you.”

Clint can’t stand it anymore, how lost Phil sounds, small and hurt at the memory. He sets his whisk down and turns, pulling Phil into his arms, wrapping him up and holding tight. Phil lets his head drop onto Clint’s shoulder, his body heaving in a deep sigh, his hand coming up to clutch at Clint’s shirt.

“I would have come for you, babe,” Clint says, his lips brushing against Phil’s temple. He holds on as tight as he can. “I promise, I’d have come if I’d known.”

Phil’s breath is shuddery and damp against Clint’s collarbone. Clint would stand there as long as Phil needed, but Phil only lets himself stay in his embrace for a minute before he pulls himself together, straightening up and stepping back, a slightly sheepish smile on his face as he goes back to check on his dough.

“Thanks,” he says, stopping the mixer.

“Thank you for telling me,” Clint says, going back to his own cooking reluctantly. “I mean it. I want—I want to be here for you, Phil. I want you to tell me things.”

Phil reaches back, brushing his fingers gently across Clint’s shoulders. “I’m out of the habit,” he says. “But I’m trying.”

“That’s as good as a promise from anyone else,” Clint says, and abandons the eggs momentarily to wrap himself around Phil from behind and feel him breathing for a while while he brushes little kisses along the nape of his neck. 

By mutual unspoken agreement, they’re quiet as they finish their tasks. Once everything is safely baking, Clint snugs himself up behind Phil again, his hands bracketing Phil’s hips. Phil leans back into Clint’s chest with a sigh, and Clint nuzzles at the soft skin behind his ear.

“I may not remember everything that happened,” Phil says, fitting his hand over Clint’s. “But even at the worst of it, I never forgot how I feel about you.”

Clint laces their fingers together, blinking back the sudden sting in his eyes. “I’m glad,” he says simply, and despite all the shit they’ve both been through, it feels like a miracle that they’re here now. 

 

A message from Tony comes halfway through breakfast, informing them that the Mark III is ready down in the lab. They don’t hurry through the meal—quiet meals with good friends aren’t so common as to be treated lightly in their world, even now—but neither do they dawdle much. They show up to the lab with Natasha in tow and the plate of cinnamon rolls, which Clint and Nat proceed to munch on while Tony fusses over the calibration of Phil’s new hand.

(They save Tony a roll, of course. Even Clint, who was literally raised in the circus, wasn’t born in a barn.)

The calibration process goes faster this time; Tony mumbles happily over his display and Phil’s shoulders relax a little more after each test, which Clint takes as a good sign. 

“OT next?” Clint asks, once Tony’s wandered off licking icing off his fingers, pulling up the plans for the polymer overlay that will eventually make Phil’s hand look indistinguishable from flesh.

“Yeah,” Phil says, then surprises him by shooting him and Nat an excited look and asking, “You guys want to come?”

“Sure,” Clint says immediately. Phil has never invited him to observe his OT before, and has always seemed to treat it as an unpleasant necessity; today, though, he’s practically bouncing on the balls of his feet with enthusiasm.

“I’ve got a good feeling about this one,” Phil says, waggling his new Mark III fingers in the air with satisfaction. “I’ve got a lot more control.”

“I can’t wait to see,” Clint tells him honestly.

“I’ve never done OT as a cover,” Nat says. “It would be interesting to observe.” 

Phil grins. “In that case, you should definitely come,” he tells her, and she nods. Phil practically power-walks down the hall to the OT lab, the two of them following at a more sedate pace.

Natasha catches Clint’s eye, inclines her head toward Phil’s back, and rubs her hand over her breastbone, signing _happy_. It’s clear from her expression that she means both that Phil is happy and that she’s happy to see it. Clint just nods, his own smile wide and probably doofy-looking, and they follow Phil into the lab.

Clint did a lot of internet research about upper-limb prosthetics and rehab during the weeks between Phil agreeing to come to the Tower and Phil actually showing up. Based on that, he’d had a vague idea that Phil would spend a lot of time, like, buttoning giant buttons and screwing nuts onto bolts that were stuck through a board. Maybe that’s what his earlier sessions were like, but he’s obviously progressed to a whole new level, if so, because the first thing Teresa brings out is a set of tiny lockpicks and a gorgeous progressive lock board that Clint’s fingers itch to try.  

“Are you, like, the therapist to the mob?” he blurts, then smacks himself in the face when Nat, Phil, and Teresa all turn to look at him. “Sorry. Forget I said that.”

“The CIA, actually,” Teresa says, lifting an amused eyebrow. “But Mr. Stark made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

“I really hope you mean a shitload of money.”

She laughs. “Better. He’s going to put a variant of Phil’s prosthetic on the market, and we’re going to get to be the beta-testers.”

The first of the locks clicks open under Phil’s fingers. He wasn’t even looking.

“Wow, the fine motor control’s come a long way,” Teresa says. “You’ve beat your best time by nearly ten seconds.”

“It’s really well balanced,” Phil tells her, as another lock opens with a satisfying _snick_. “The Mark I was laggy and the Mark II was twitchy, but I think we’ve found the sweet spot.”

Clint chuckles to himself. “That’s what you—”

“No,” Nat says. 

“No,” Phil says.

Teresa coughs, smirking.

Clint subsides, too amused to be put out. It _was_ what Phil said last night, though.

Phil blazes through the lock board, looking triumphant, smugger with each new record time he sets, and even making gloating little _hah!_ noises at the particularly tricky ones. It’s adorable. After that, he moves on to other things, something with circuitry and something with wiring and something with a really tiny keypad, and then Teresa brings out some kind of a machine with an upright, squashy-looking cylinder attached to a monitor that looks for all the world like some kind of cyborg dildo, and Clint feels his eyebrows inching upwards.

Nat elbows him in the ribs. “It’s to help him calibrate his grip,” she whispers. “Don’t be a child.”

That’s all well and good, but Clint can’t pretend that watching Phil wrap his metal fingers around the dildo-thing and squeeze to various specified levels of pressure isn’t triggering certain _associations,_ especially when Teresa is so vocally impressed by Phil’s delicacy and precision.

(Clint could tell her a thing or two along those lines already. He’s extremely interested to see what the improvements will yield.)

When Phil is done with the grip strength tests, Teresa moves him from fine-muscle work to gross muscle movements, having him do push-ups, lift moderate amounts of weight, throw some punches at some force pads. Clint can feel himself perking up like Lucky hearing Ruben the pizza delivery guy at the door.

“You and Clint should spar,” Natasha says, because she’s actually probably kind of a mind reader.

“That’s an excellent idea,” Teresa says, before Phil can say anything. “I’ve been telling you, Phil, you need to practice with other people in a controlled environment before you’ll be able to depend on yourself in the field again. Your parameters are different now; you know how important it is to know them.”

“I know,” Phil says. “It’s just… I’ve broken a fair bit of furniture. I wouldn’t want it to be somebody’s arm.”

“Your precision and control with the Mark III are actually 4% better than most people have with their original hands,” Teresa says. “This is as good as the hardware will get until your nerves are completely healed, so unless you’re planning on going on sabbatical for most of the next year—”

“No,” Phil says. “No, of course not, you’re right.” He arches a questioning eyebrow at Clint. “So, what do you say?” he asks. 

Clint rubs his hands together gleefully. “I say, bring it on.”

They troop down a few floors to the free-spar gym (not the full-spar gym that’s reinforced for the Iron Man suit and Cap’s shield and the like, but the one that’s meant for people with mostly-squishy human bodies) and change. Phil’s got a locker at the end of the row, right next to the one for Vision, which is basically empty because Vision can just manifest whatever clothes he wants to wear, but nobody wanted him to feel left out. Clint follows Phil’s lead and goes out barefoot, taking advantage of the rosin box on his hands and feet. His pulse quickens in anticipation: barefoot means grappling, with Phil, which is crazy fun and also, Clint knows with the benefit of his new perspective on life, hot like hellfire.

It’s gonna be a good afternoon.

Teresa and Natasha sit on one of the benches around the perimeter of the room while Clint and Phil make their way to the center of the sparring ring, the padded floor flexing a little under their feet. Clint stretches elaborately, linking his hands above his head and arching his back so that his shirt rides up and his shorts slip down a little; nobody ever said they couldn’t have a little bit of fun while they spar. Phil just shoots him a wry look, but his lips are shiny and wet where he’s licked them. Clint grins, leering back cheerfully.

“Get a room, Barton,” Natasha calls from the sidelines. He makes a face at her.

“I have no idea what you’re talking abou—” Clint begins, but cuts off with a grunt as Phil seizes the advantage of his distraction and hits him like a truck. Arm around the neck, leg sweep, and _bam,_ Clint’s hitting the mat, limbs flailing, his breath stolen in equal measure by Phil’s businesslike pin and the fierce brightness in his eyes.

He can hear Natasha cackling in the background.

“I feel like I should be trash-talking right now,” he says, as soon as he can speak, “but not gonna lie, I’m mostly just turned on.”

Phil laughs, standing up and pulling Clint to his feet with one heave of his metal hand. “Later,” he promises. “You ready to spar now, or am I going to have to ask Natasha?”

Clint shakes out his limbs and rolls his shoulder, pulling his head back into the game. “I was born ready,” he says, and lunges.

The thing about Clint is that he looks like he’d be one kind of fighter—the bulky, punchy kind, the kind that works off a boxer’s playbook—but he’s spent most of his life doing agility and precision training, so his fighting style reflects that. Most times a fight gets to close quarters, he’s able to get the advantage through dexterity and speed, being slippery and sneaky in a way that people don't expect from a guy that looks like him. Trouble is, he learned most of that from Natasha and Phil. With them, the mental component of sparring takes precedence over the physical, as Clint tries to maneuver into a position where he can use his extra weight and strength to gain an advantage.

Phil’s always been a crafty fighter, smart and slippery and mean and prone to wild-ass improvisation. Since the last time Clint sparred with him, though, he’s changed; he’s more aggressive than he used to be, more likely to go in for a blow than to circle around waiting for the perfect opportunity. It throws Clint off a little at first, but after the second time Phil hits when he used to feint, Clint forces himself to stop trying to base his decisions off what he expects Phil to do, and starts trying to read Phil like any new opponent, starts pulling in his own new skills.

It’s messy and rough and exhilarating. They clash together, muscles straining as they grapple, hands sliding along sweat-slick skin as they look for leverage. Clint starts out paying attention to how Phil’s using his hand, but pretty soon he’s forgotten everything but the fight. He’s got his blood up, now, his body practically humming with it. They trade off the lead; they’re both playing with it a little, trying out different things. Clint actually manages to pull off one of the spinning drop-kicks Cap is so fond of, and is so tickled to land it that he forgets to press his advantage in favor of raising his hands in a triumphant “hah!” that is quickly cut off by a tackle.

They might have gone on for hours—-well maybe not _hours,_ but for a long time, until their bodies made them stop—except that they haven’t actually had lunch yet, and Clint’s stomach growls so loud in the middle of a hold that Phil hears it.

“Sounds like we’d better wrap this up,” Phil says, as Clint manages to wriggle free. 

“I guess I’d better go ahead and win, then,” Clint says, cracking his neck.

“You can go ahead and try,” Phil tells him, and then they both move at the same time.

Everything blurs into a series of sensations: the thwack of a blocked punch, the whistle of air from a barely-dodged kick, the fierce bright energy in Phil’s eyes. Finally, Clint’s greater reserves pay off, and he manages to get inside Phil’s guard, bearing him down to the mat more through brute force than skill. Phil fights him the whole way, chest heaving and muscles flexing. Clint gets a hand around each of Phil’s wrists, and tries to throw his weight over Phil’s torso. Phil kicks up, nearly knocking him off, and he has to pull his weight back, trying to pin Phil’s hips. Suddenly, something knocks him off-balance and he lurches to one side, then Phil gets a leg around him—gets an arm around him—and with a twist and a flip, Clint finds himself flat on his back in a headlock, Phil using his legs as leverage to press him down into the mat, pushing Clint’s own arm into his throat. 

Ow. 

He tries to struggle, but Phil has him well to rights, his body heavy on Clint’s, arms straining. Every move Clint makes just makes it harder to breathe, and he finally raises his arm to tap out.

Phil lets go immediately, sitting back and uncurling, and Clint realizes that he’s still holding Phil’s hand: what made him lose his balance was Phil _taking his own damn hand off_.

“Nice one,” he says, holding the hand back out to Phil, who accepts it with a smug little smile. Clint reaches out, halfway planning to pull Phil back over on top of him, this time for a slightly different reason, when he’s interrupted.

“That was really impressive, Director Coulson,” someone says, and shit, since when did Steve get back to Manhattan and who invited him to this party? Phil looks over, and okay, he’s already flushed from exertion, but the tips of his ears go deeper pink and he makes an aborted little move like he wants to shoot his nonexistent cuffs.

Clint looks over; lined up on the benches watching them, in addition to Natasha and Teresa, are Tony, Pepper, Steve, and Vision, who is wearing an argyle sweater and an ascot. Clint tries to unobtrusively angle his hips away from that side of the room; it’s all very well and good to get a little carried away in front of Natasha—she’s shockproof—but you don’t exactly want to let it all hang out in front of Captain America and an android in an ascot.

“Cap’s right,” Tony says, gleeful. “I mean, I thought Clint was gonna hand you your ass for a minute there, but you got the upper hand.”

Clint groans, but Phil just slots his hand back into place with a satisfied-sounding click. “Well, the hardware helped,” he says, his mild tone belying the way his pulse is visibly hammering in his throat. “I’ve really got to hand it to you, Stark, you did a nice job with this one.”

Tony opens his mouth, obviously gearing up for more, when Pepper threads her arm through his. 

“It’s good to see you doing so well, Phil,” she says, smiling at him, and Clint can see the relief in the line of Phil’s shoulders at her open welcome.

“Likewise,” Phil says warmly. 

“We came down to invite you both to lunch,” Pepper continues. “You too, of course,” she adds, looking at Nat and Teresa. “I’m looking forward to catching up.”

Clint looks over at Phil, who is still flushed and panting, sweat dewed on his face and the tufts of hair showing at the neck of his shirt. Clint wants to trace the path of each droplet with his tongue. He tries to convey _say no, say no_ with the power of his mind. Phil looks him up and down, a hungry flick of his eyes that Clint can practically feel, and opens his mouth to say something.

“I’d really like to catch up, now that you’re feeling better,” says Steve, in that butter-wouldn’t-melt tone that means he is being an absolute troll. Clint’s going to set his ass on fire with his mind as soon as he develops mental powers. Like right about… now.

Or… now.

Damn.

Phil makes apologetic eyebrows at him and turns away. “I’d be happy to get you up to speed, Captain,” he says. “Just give us a few minutes to clean up first?”

“Of course, Phil,” Pepper says. Clint tries not to scowl too obviously, but he’s pretty sure he fails, judging from Natasha’s delicate snort.

“Each to your own shower, boys,” she says airily. “You wouldn’t want the food to get cold.”

Clint curses her in Hungarian. She doesn’t even pretend to care.

Clint takes a fast, chilly, resentful shower and is bending over toweling off his legs when Phil comes back into the locker room, looking entirely too lickable for the good of their schedule.

“Your body is a work of art,” Phil tells him, which isn’t even fair; Clint’s trying to be good.

He drops his towel and reaches out, grabbing Phil’s hand and pulling him close enough that the hem of Phil’s towel brushes Clint’s thighs. There’s a little water pooling in the hollow of Phil’s collarbone; Clint reaches out with a finger and wipes it up. Phil shivers, his hands moving to clasp Clint’s bare hips. 

“You were amazing out there,” Clint tells him, bending to lip gently along the path his finger had just taken. “Even better than you used to be. I don’t know which I want more, to have you right here on this bench or to drag you back onto the mat and go again.”

Phil swallows hard. “I know which one I’d vote for.” His eyes flick to the bench and back to Clint, settling on his cock, which has overcome the cold shower and is perking up again, heavy between his thighs.

“Yeah,” Clint says, his voice rasping in his throat. He lets his hands trace slowly over Phil’s shoulders, his biceps, his mismatched forearms, then he steps back, repressing a moan as Phil’s fingers flex tight on his hips before dropping away. “Me too. Unfortunately, we can’t do either, because we have to have _lunch_ with _Captain America_.”

“You know,” Phil says thoughtfully, “if you had told me five years ago that I’d ever be in a situation where I was considering blowing off Captain America so we could have quick and dirty sex in a locker room, I’d have sent you in for a psych evaluation.”

“Excuse me, sirs,” FRIDAY says, making them both jump. “But Agent Romanoff has asked me to relay the message that lunch is getting cold.”

The conflicted look on Phil’s face is so adorable Clint can’t even hold on to his pique. “Tell her we’ll be up in a minute,” he says, then gives Phil his best come-hither look. “Later,” he promises.

“I’ll hold you to it,” Phil says.

 

It turns out that lunch is sushi. 

Nat just smirks at them, unrepentant. “We’d have never gotten you out of bed, otherwise,” she says. “And that’s if we were lucky and you didn’t defile any of the common areas.”

“Please spare me the details of your den of carnality,” Tony says, stealing a gyoza.

“You might find them enlightening, Stark,” Phil says calmly, mixing soy sauce and wasabi into a disgusting slurry. “Clint’s extremely flexible.”

Tony makes a sound like an offended duck and wanders off to talk to Vision about smoking jackets. Across the table, Pepper smiles.

 

Clint’s worked with Steve long enough by this point that any sort of awe or hero-worship he might have been inclined toward (or, to be honest, any sort of jealousy over Phil’s minor obsession) has long since faded away; Steve’s his teammate, a good kid with a good heart who’s his own worst enemy, too smart to buy anyone’s bullshit and too dumb to stop trying to carry the world by himself. He hadn’t realized that Phil’s not had the same chance to get to know _Steve,_ that he’s still thinking of him as _Cap._  

Clint’s not sure whether it’s fannishness or embarrassment from Steve seeing them sexy-sparring that’s got Phil tongue-tied. He got through the SHIELD sitrep okay, but after that conversation lapsed.

It’s basically Clint’s duty as a good fiancé to help him out, here.

“Hey Steve,” he says, helping himself to some sea urchin (Kate’s got him hooked on the stuff.) “Did you know that Phil did his master’s thesis on Peggy Carter?”

Steve’s eyes light up, his face brightening. It’s both sweet and heartbreaking, how in love he still is with that woman. “Really? That’s great! People always tried to make it like I did everything, but honestly, I’d have gotten myself killed the first week if it weren’t for Peggy.”

Phil straightens, a hungry gleam in his eye; it’s a side of him Clint has seen a few times, the historian with a line on a new and tantalizing primary source that nobody else has written about yet. “Actually, I drew significantly from your mission reports, but I’ve always wondered…”

Clint listens happily as Phil forgets his nerves in favor of trying to pin down some inconsistency in the files that—if Clint remembers right—has been bothering him since the first draft of his paper.

Clint is _great_ at romance.

 

It takes them hours to finally make it back to Clint’s place, but Phil is so obviously happy to be reconnecting with everyone that Clint can’t even bring himself to care much. There’s no real hurry, after all. Phil’s coming home with Clint at the end of the day.

They don’t even pause in the kitchen or living room; they’re on the same page, moving into the bedroom with unified purpose. 

“That was slick as hell, what you did with your hand earlier,” Clint says, kicking off his shoes.

“Now that he’s got the main functionality smoothed out, Stark’s added a few other features,” Phil says, unbuttoning his shirt with a fluidity that makes Clint smile. “Some of them your designs, I understand. Some were my idea.”

“I really hope that tone means that these features have sexy applications,” Clint tells him, pulling off his own shirt.

“You’d want that?” Phil seems honestly surprised. “I mean, you wouldn’t mind it touching you… intimately?”

“Phil.” Clint stops his undressing and shuffles over to Phil with his undone pants loose around his hips. He curls both his hands around Phil’s prosthetic and pulls it up to his face, kisses the cool, smooth fingers, inhales the smell of metal and graphite that has come to be just as much _Phil_ to him as bergamot and sandalwood and gun oil. “I want your hands on me as often as I can get them, in as many ways as I can have. _Both_ your hands.” A thought strikes him. “Have you even touched yourself with it yet? You know,” he lowers his voice, going for a silly smooth-jazz radio deejay sort of thing, _“intimately?”_

Phil laughs, looking sheepish. “I’ve hardly had a chance,” he says. “You’ll remember that the earlier versions weren’t always reliable.”

“Yeah,” Clint agrees. “It would really suck to, like, squeeze your dick off.”

Phil made a face. “Exactly. Plus, well, even if that hadn’t been a concern, I hardly wanted to spend much time masturbating when I had you in my bed.” He nods at Clint, eyes tracing over his bare chest. Clint has to kiss Phil’s hands again.

“You’ll make me blush, sweetheart,” he teases, then he really does blush a little at the sappiness that just came out of his mouth. That wasn’t what he meant to say. It just slipped out while Clint was busy admiring the crinkles beside Phil’s beautiful eyes.

Phil takes his flesh hand out of Clint’s grasp and runs his fingers through Clint’s hair, his face bright and fond. “I’d like to make you do more than that,” he says, his voice a caress. “I’d like to make you come so hard you forget how to speak.”

“Do it,” Clint says instantly, skin prickling with a rush of lust. “Make me scream for you, babe. Fuck, that’s hot.” He runs his fingers along Phil’s metal wrist, down to the seam of his socket. Phil shivers when Clint’s touch traces the line between metal and skin.

“So tell me,” Clint says, dropping Phil’s arm so he can step in close, Phil’s chest hair just brushing against his skin. “What other surprises you got in that thing?”

“Oh, this and that,” Phil smiles. He holds up his index finger and flexes it in a distinct pattern, one slow bend and two quick flicks. Through his aids, Clint can just barely hear a quiet, high-pitched hum. 

“What’s that?”

“Ultrasonic emitter.” Phil lays his fingertip at the base of Clint’s neck, and Clint jumps; it’s vibrating rapidly.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he says. “You have a _vibrator finger?”_

“Ultrasonics are very useful in the field,” Phil says. “Remember what we did with Woo’s toothbrush that time in Tikrit?”

“Huh.” That _had_ been useful, come to think of it. The toothbrush had been ruined, though. It had taken Jimmy six weeks to get the requisition approved for a replacement.

“The vibrator part is just a bonus,” Phil adds. He trails his buzzing fingertip down Clint’s chest, over the thick pads of muscle, circling his nipples but never getting too close. Clint sucks in a breath. His nipples are starting to stand up, the indirect stimulation sensitizing them, making them draw up tight, straining for contact that isn’t coming. Clint’s hands flex at his sides, and he puts them on Phil’s hips to avoid the temptation to just flip him over onto the bed. He wants to see what Phil has planned; besides, despite what some people might think, Clint actually understands the appeal of delayed gratification. Sometimes. He wiggles his fingers underneath the waistband of Phil’s underwear, petting the warm soft skin.

Phil hums a little, bringing his flesh hand up to stroke over Clint’s abs, the warm press of his palms a shivery counterpoint to the zing of the metal finger now circling just outside Clint’s areola.

“This the sexy version of patting your head and rubbing your stomach?” Clint asks. If that finger would just move half an inch lower… “Walking and chewing gum at the same time?”

“I don’t know,” Phil says. His tone is ordinary, like they’re having any old conversation, but his eyes are blown dark and he licks his lips, glancing between Clint’s face and his trembling chest. “Why don’t you tell me?”

He slides his vibrating finger in a quick spiral, coming to rest lightly on the peak of Clint’s nipple, and Clint makes a helpless, whining, wheezing sort of noise, hands clenching on Phil’s hips, though he doesn’t know whether he wants to push him away or pull him in tighter. 

“Hnnngh,” he manages, and Phil pulls his finger away, moving his other hand to smooth over the tingling flesh, calming the intensity and leaving a warm glow behind.

“Oh,” Phil says, lifting his hand away. “Oh, look at you, that’s gorgeous.”

Clint looks down. His nipple is flushed pink, the skin drawn up so tight it aches in the slight air current from the vent. Since he keeps his chest bare (his tac suit tends to rub his hair off in weird patterns otherwise), it stands out pretty dramatically from the rest of his chest.

“I want to make you match,” Phil says, his voice gone low and rumbly, and Clint, who might possibly be going to actually pass out before he even gets his pants all the way off, just makes a sort of “be my guest” nod and tries to worm his hands a little further into Phil’s underwear.

Phil raises his still-buzzing hand to Clint’s other pec, and he braces himself for the slow delicious torment spiral to be repeated. This time, though, while Phil is idly tracing shapes around the left nipple, he steps in closer, bending down and licking a broad stripe over the right one with a soft, wet tongue.

“Ffffuck!” Clint gasps, and yanks Phil hard toward him, arching his back to push his chest into Phil’s mouth and hand, trying to rut his hips into Phil’s at the same time.

He loses track of time a little after that. Phil seems to have to decided that Clint’s nipples are his new favorite toy, or maybe he just really likes hearing Clint babble and moan nonsensically, because he’s _ruthless_. He moves back and forth between Clint’s nipples, teasing each one to aching hardness before using his buzzing finger to send jolts of pure sensation zinging from his nipples to his cock, pushing each time to the edge of Clint’s endurance before soothing the throbbing flesh with his tongue. When he finally pulls away, mouth wet and red, Clint’s been leaking enough to make a wet spot in his shorts. He’s honestly not sure how he’s still on his feet.

Clint swallows, trying to work some moisture back into his mouth. “Pants. _Off,”_ he orders, shoving at Phil’s waistband as best he can with his hands still underneath it. Phil nods, sharp and approving, and runs his own hands down Clint’s flanks, gathering his loose pants and his underwear and pushing them down to just above his knees.

“You’ll have to let go a minute,” Phil tells him.

Clint doesn’t want to—he likes his hands exactly where they are, which is down Phil’s pants. On the other hand, he’s extremely eager to get to what’s underneath.

“Fine,” he says, trying not to sound petulant, and makes himself step back, out of reach of temptation for the moment. They both peel out of the rest of their clothes as fast as they can, though Clint maybe trips over his pant legs a little bit kicking them off because he’s trying to watch Phil instead of paying attention to what he’s doing.

They’re naked in seconds, and Phil pulls back the covers on the bed and climbs in, crawling across to his side (he’s got a side! In Clint’s bed!) and kneeling up to take Clint’s hand. 

He tugs lightly, and Clint is more than happy to let himself be pulled down into the bed, letting Phil guide him into an extravagant sprawl up against the pillows. He looks up at where Phil is kneeling next to his hip, letting a gleam of the same challenge he’d thrown when they were sparring into his expression.

“You got any other tricks up your sleeve?” he asks, and grins in triumph when Phil laughs at the terrible pun.

Phil sweeps his metal hand—no longer buzzing, but still cool and sleek and amazing on Clint’s heated skin—down the center of his body, just missing his still-tingling nipples and stopping just above the thatch of sandy hair at his groin.

“You say that like I’m finished with this one,” he says, in that mild, steady voice that means _shit just got real_. Clint’s toes curl.

“Oh?” he asks, his voice gone breathy.

Phil rests his flesh hand over Clint’s heart and nudges Clint’s thighs further apart with his metal one. One cool finger traces the crease of Clint’s groin, tracing around his balls and the base of his dick but never touching them directly. Clint sucks in a whining breath through his nose and clutches at Phil’s free arm.

“You asked me to do something, earlier,” Phil says, that maddening finger still following its taunting path, almost down to Clint’s asshole but not quite. “Is that still what you want?”

He what? Clint tries to think back. It’s difficult,with Phil right there and Clint all spread out for him to do as he likes with, for him to—oh. Right.

_Make me scream for you_ , he’d said.

He looks up into Phil’s intent face, lets his gaze drift down over the broad, scarred, beautiful chest, the gleaming metal hand, the heavy erection leaving wet smears against the skin of his hip.

“You think you can do it?” He licks his lips, gratified when Phil echoes the gesture, leaving his mouth shiny and even more kissable than normal. “I mean, you know. Spy. I’m good at keeping quiet.”

“Well.” Phil lets his finger slip down over Clint’s hole, and he can’t hold back a grunt, his cock twitching at the sensation. Phil smirks. “Any worthy goal is worth the pursuit.”

“Well, then,” Clint tells him, trying for cocky but probably coming off as just horny, “pursue aw—aaaaaaahshit!”

Sooooo, note to self: it is in fact possible to give someone a smug eyebrow with their cock halfway down your throat. Good to know.

Really good. Really, really, really…

What was he thinking about again? 

Phil swallows, his throat working around Clint’s dick, and Clint gives up any hope of organized thought and just lets himself enjoy it. Phil’s amazing with his mouth, changing up the speed and tightness and tension of his movements until Clint stops even trying to anticipate what he’ll do next. He thinks he’s maybe babbling, but he can’t even spare enough attention to tell what he’s saying; every bit of his mind that isn’t devoted to _hot-wet-Phil-soft-yes_ is concentrating on staying still. Phil hasn’t really asked him to, though it was kind of implied, but it makes everything he’s doing to Clint feel even better, somehow. Clint just lies there, taking it; he doesn’t bleed off any of his tension by moving, by pushing his ass back or his dick up to get more of Phil’s lush mouth, his slowly circling finger.  
It's like there's a spool of wire inside his gut, and Phil is winding it up tighter and tighter with every pass of his hand and stroke of his tongue. Clint never would have thought it, but Phil's metal finger on his skin is somehow devastatingly sexual, more than even his flesh ones; it's something about feeling what is so obviously a machine moving along his body with what is so obviously living intent driving it. There's something transgressive about it, kinky and terribly intimate. Phil, being the absurdly competent man he is, has found a pattern that he can maintain indefinitely; he's keeping Clint right on the verge of desperation but never quite tipping him over. Clint isn't sure how long it takes before Phil pulls off his cock with a satisfied hum and sits back; he just knows that his skin is stretched tight, that his cock is standing straight up and jerking with every heartbeat, that the whisper of air over his wet skin is making him twitch and writhe. 

"Fuck, you're beautiful like this," Phil says, his voice catching. "All laid out for me. You want to move, I can see it in your body." He traces over the coiled muscle of Clint's thigh with a warm finger, making him bite back a sound. "But you don't. All that power, and you hold it back for me." He bends down and brushes a kiss over the tip of Clint's cock, and Clint can't keep from gasping at the feeling, amazing but too light to do anything but ratchet his tension higher.

Phil sits back, licking a smear of pre-come off his bottom lip.

"I won't be holding back much longer if you don't stop teasing me," Clint  grits out. 

"It's not a tease," Phil says, swiping his metal thumb roughly over both of Clint's aching nipples. "It's a prelude."

Clint doesn't reply, because he's too busy moaning at the streak of fire running across his chest. He can't decide whether it hurts or feels amazing. Possibly it's both at the same time, Phil, you glorious kinky bastard.

"That thing feels incredible," he croaks, when he's able to get some moisture back in his mouth. "What is that, is it, like, ribbed or something?"

"It... kind of?" Phil rubs his metal fingers together. "There's a texture. It makes it easier to grip than if the fingers were smooth."

Clint shivers. The texture isn't exactly prominent, but now that he is paying attention he can feel it, fine ripples on the inside of the hand, where finger and palm prints would be. It didn't feel noticeable when Phil touched his leg, but on the more sensitive areas the texture gives Phil's touch an added little jolt that Clint wants to feel again.

"Put it inside me," he demands.

Phil sucks in a breath, and Clint can feel his cock jerk a little where it's brushing against Clint's hip.

"I'm not sure that's the best idea," Phil says, swallowing hard. "Remember the headboard."

Clint scoffs. "I just watched not four hours ago while you juggled apricots without bruising them. Don't try to claim you don't have a delicate enough touch."

"Are you comparing your ass to an apricot?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Phil, my ass is obviously a peach."

Phil groans, though his eyes are crinkled in amusement. "Okay, you're right, it’s probably fine. But your safety is more important than a bowl of fruit, Clint. I need to be sure."

Clint reaches out and takes Phil's hand, twining their fingers together and struggling to pull himself together enough to make coherent sentences. "I know, babe,” he says.  “But I know you; you won't be completely sure until you've seen for yourself. But I'm sure, okay? Sure enough for both of us.” He meets Phil’s eyes, squeezing his hand. “I want you to take me apart, Phil,” he says. “Do it, and trust me to say if I need you to stop."

Phil visibly shudders, his eyes slipping shut. "You can't say things like that and expect me to hold it together."

“You’ll be fine, babe.” Clint pulls their joined hands up to his lips and kisses the soft skin at the base of Phil's thumb. “I trust you.” He arches his back a little, drawing Phil's attention back to Clint's dick, bobbing comically against his stomach. “Do whatever you want. Hell, hold me down and have your way with me, you know I’ll love it.”

Phil's face goes still. It's a look that Clint knows well. It's Phil's _this-mission-is-going-off-course-but-I-have-a-cunning-plan_ look. Given the current context, Clint has high hopes for what that look means for him over the next hour or so.

"You're sure," Phil says, his eyes steady. It isn't a question, and Clint loves how well Phil knows him.

"This is going to be epic," he says happily.

Phil laughs. "Well, I'll certainly do my best."

"That will always be all I need and more," Clint says, turning serious for a moment. Phil's eyes go bright, and he bends to press a quick, fierce kiss to Clint's mouth before he moves down the bed to kneel between Clint's splayed legs. He pulls a towel from the convenient stack next to the bed—they’ve been having a _lot_ of sex lately, okay, and Clint only has so many sheets—and tucks it neatly under Clint’s hips.

"I almost feel bad, neglecting this,"Phil says, running one metal fingertip down the length of Clint's straining cock.

"I feel confident you'll make it up to me before the night's over," Clint says, fighting to keep from bucking up into the touch.

Phil flips open the cap on one of the bottles of lube that are now scattered around the apartment like they're saving them for the winter. It's the extra-thick silicone stuff, and they’ve already used up about a third of the bottle: it’s a fun time. Clint catches a glimpse of the label, where a banner says ”for intense anal play!” He likes the sound of that.

Phil coats his metal fingers with lube and holds them up, glistening wet, to show Clint.

_"In,"_ Clint whines. "In in in, come _on_." Clint can be patient, of course—he’s a fucking sniper, it kind of goes with the territory—but he feels like he's been waiting for Phil for about a year. He feels empty and desperate and he, he just wants so much, he wants Phil and everything about him, everything that means. He wants Phil to turn him inside-out and mark him up and then turn him right-side-in again, so Clint will have him always, running safely just under the skin.

Phil decides to be merciful, apparently, at least for now. He presses his finger to Clint's hole, and doesn't play around with it, just pushes inside, the whole length of his finger sinking in on a slow, steady glide that feels like heaven. Phil lets it rest there for a moment, letting Clint get used to the intrusion, then slowly crooks his finger, rubbing deliberately over Clint's prostate.

Clint howls, his cock jerking, body bowing. It's _so_ good, so _fucking_ good, he’s cranked so high everything feels like fire. But, like, good fire. Sexy fire.

"Does that mean I win?" Phil smirks.

"Not a scream," Clint informs him breathlessly, after a minute where he just stares stupidly, trying to remember what Phil’s talking about. "That was a manly bellow."

"Guess I'll have a try harder, then." Phil's eyes are gleaming, hungry, so amazing. Clint is _totally_ about to die of sex.

Awesome.

“You could start by moving,” Clint suggests, because he has a fixation now.

“Mmmm.” Phil pulls his finger back, taking his sweet time. Clint can feel every ripple of texture. Phil pauses with the tip barely still inside, then twirls it around a little like he’s stirring his coffee. “And then what?”

The way Phil’s finger _feels_ , damn, it’s like nothing else on earth. In the spare corner of his brain that isn’t completely occupied with the _sex now Phil now yes sex Phil_ track, Clint feels a little bad for all those jokes he’s made about Tony wanting to have sex with the Iron Man suit. If it felt anything like this does, that might well be a totally legitimate life choice.

“Clint?”

Right. Phil asked him a question. He tries to remember, but he’s got nothing. He tries to look cute, although Nat and Kate have both told him that particular expression is more like a stunned fish. “…huh?”

Phil looks down at him all soft and loving, so obviously Clint’s cute look works, hah. Then he twists his finger to nudge Clint’s prostate again.

“Hnngh,” Clint says.

“I asked you what you want,” Phil says patiently. “What’s the goal tonight?”

“Well, you’ve got four more fingers,” Clint blurts out, then goes prickly-hot all over, because _yes_.

“I—really?” Phil pulls his hand all the way back.

“That’s the _wrong way_ ,” Clint says, affronted. “Get back there.”

Phil’s holding his hand up where they both can see. “You mean it, though? The whole thing?”

And that’s, fuck, it’s so _stupid hot_ that Clint is a little concerned he might actually come, which would suck. Well, no, it would feel great, but not as great as what he wants. Which is _the whole thing_.

_“Yes,”_ he tells Phil, doing his very best to project all his desperate sincerity and horniness into the single word.

“I’ve never done that before,” Phil says. His eyes are flicking rapidly between Clint’s ass and his face, and he’s biting his lip. 

“Neither have I,” Clint tells him. “C’mon, babe, we’ll figure it out together.”

Phil shivers. “ _Fuck_ ,” he says. “That’s—I shouldn’t care about that, but damn, Clint, I want to be…” 

“Be my first,” Clint urges. He feels a wicked shiver in his belly himself at the thought, that even at their age and level of experience, there’s an act they can have with only each other. “And I’ll be yours.”

“Fuck, yes, okay,” Phil says, and he slides his finger back inside, fast and a little jerky in his haste. It’s the best thing ever in the history of ever, right up until he comes back in with two fingers, crossing and scissoring them inside Clint, and then _that_ takes the title. By the time Phil gets his third finger in, Clint has given up entirely on any kind of mental ranking system and is devoting his energy to a fairly even split between being so turned on his _teeth_ want to come and trying desperately not to let himself go yet.

Clint's always loved this- getting fingered, getting fucked, getting plugged, it didn't matter which; he loves the open and stretch of it, the empty-then-full of it, the feeling of being pinned down and spread out and _seen to_. He loves it too much to let himself have it very often; blowjobs are just bodies, but giving someone his ass, letting them inside, that's something different. It makes him too raw, too exposed. It shows too much. It gives too much away.

Phil, though. Phil is different. Phil is _his._ Phil loves him—Phil has loved him for so long—and he's safe. Clint can have this. He can let Phil give him this. He can let Phil see. It's safe to let go, to let himself feel. To go farther than he ever has, let himself be ultimately vulnerable and open with the only person in the world he’d ever trust to do it.

Phil's fingers are body-warm inside him, hard and slick as they fuck into him deliberate and slow, pausing every few strokes to spread apart, to tease Clint open just a little more, coaxing his muscles to relax. Clint can feel his hole stretching, getting looser, sloppy with so much lube he's distantly surprised Phil doesn't slip right back out again. He's got a great view of Phil, still kneeling between Clint's legs, face framed by Clint's upright knees. He's flushed and intent, sweat glittering in his hairline and on his top lip, his mouth bitten red, looking down at Clint's ass—at _his robot fingers going into Clint's ass_ —with the focused expression of a man field-stripping a rifle, interspersed with flashes of hot greed. It makes Clint shiver and spread his thighs further apart, pushing back on Phil's fingers.

"Give me another now, I'm ready," he says, and he is definitely not whining at all with the need to get Phil to hurry up and fist him already. "Please, babe, I need more, come _on."_

"You're a menace, Barton," Phil growls. He twists his hand, sending all three knuckles rubbing over Clint's prostate in rapid succession, and Clint groans deep in his chest, a little spurt of fluid dripping from his cock. It’s a good thing Clint always softens up a little during penetration—he has a theory that his body can't pay attention to his dick and his ass at the same time—because he's pretty sure he'd have come like ten minutes ago, otherwise.

Phil pulls his hand back again until only the fingertips are still inside. He squirts some more lube on; the chill of it makes Clint yelp, which turns into a groan when the fingers press back in. They’re gathered together in a neat bundle, the three Phil has given him already and then the additional little bump of Phil's pinkie. He's loosened Clint up enough that the fourth finger hardly even burns, going in; it's an intense stretch, but mostly it just feels good, like stretching out a cramped limb, only sexy.

Clint moans as Phil works his fingers in, gentle and achingly slow. He moves forward in soft little nudges, a little further in each time, a bit more stretch, and then pauses there to stroke Clint's inner walls while he adjusts. Each new centimeter of Phil's hand is cool against his heated skin. Clint wishes Phil would hurry and that he'd go even slower so that the feeling would last forever.

Finally, Phil pauses the steady motions of his hand. "I've got my fingers all the way in," he says, and Clint blinks at him, shocked at how raw his voice sounds already. He clenches around Phil, groaning at the sensation, full of slick, hard metal.

"It's good," he says, reaching out, contracting his abs to sit up some so he can touch Phil. He cups Phil's face, smoothing out a little furrow of concern in his forehead. "It's exactly what I want, Phil. Give me the rest."

Phil turns his face into Clint's hand, kissing the tender skin beneath his lips. "You may want to lie back down," he says, and Clint flops back onto the pillows with a grunt when Phil takes him at his word and starts to push in again. It's the most intense stretch so far, the place where the full breadth of Phil's hand breaches Clint's body; Phil's knuckles are toughened and knobby from a long and glorious career of punching bad guys, and apparently Tony modeled the design of the prosthetic after Phil's original hand, became Clint would swear he can feel every bump as it slides deeper in.

"There you go," Phil says at last, when he's in as far as he can go with four fingers, his thumb pressed up flat against Clint's perineum, nudging under his tight balls. He runs his flesh fingertip around Clint's stretched-out rim, making Clint moan. 

“Can you feel me?” Clint asks, clenching down around Phil’s hand again just to feel its amazing bulk. “What do I feel like?”

“I—yes,” Phil says. He pulls his hand out a little and rotates as he pushes it slowly back in, forcing another groan out of Clint’s chest along with it. “It feels… tight, so tight, and hot and soft. I have my hand on the delicate mode, so it’s amplifying all the feedback signals from the touch receptors. I—I’ve never felt anything like it.”

Clint can feel himself grinning, wide and wicked. “Oh, _really,”_ he purrs.

Phil presses his thumb hard against Clint’s perineum and crooks his fingers inside him, squeezing Clint’s prostate from both sides. It’s blindingly intense, like Phil just set off a bomb inside him, a sheet of sensation that his body can hardly process. He arches off the bed on his heels and shoulders, meaningless sounds spilling out of him. For a long moment, his body teeters between pleasure and pain, and then Phil pins Clint’s hips down with his other arm, leans forward, and takes the very tip of Clint’s cock delicately into his mouth. He’s only there for a few seconds—suck, suck, and then a soft wet lick goodbye—but it’s enough to bring Clint’s body down firmly on the side of pleasure, each near-imperceptible movement of Phil’s fingers inside him feeling better than the one before. He only lasts a few seconds before he feels his orgasm coiling up in his balls, and flails his arms down like he’s trying to land a plane.

“Stop, stop,” he pants. “Gonna come if you—just hold still!”

Phil stills immediately, his lips—bitten red and shiny-wet—curving into a gorgeous, smug grin. “Yes, really,” he says, and as soon as Clint pulls himself together enough to remember what Phil is talking about, he shoots him a halfhearted bird.

Phil chuckles. “Should I keep going,” he asks, “or would you like to move on to something else?”

Clint thinks about it. He’s loosened up nicely around Phil’s hand, and the pressure and stretch of it feels phenomenal inside him; he wants more, is downright greedy for it, but even with enhanced receptors or whatever, it’s not like the hand is an erogenous zone. “What do _you_ want?” he asks. “I mean, I can’t help feel like maybe it’s a little unfair, me getting all the attention here.”

“Oh, trust me,” Phil says, voice dark and raspy. He rubs his cock against the inside of Clint’s thigh, and Clint sucks in a breath; it’s fever-hot against his exposed skin, full and hard, leaving a wet trail behind it as it brushes against him. “I’m getting plenty out of this. I’m good to continue if you are.”

“Then do it,” Clint decides. “Like we said before. The whole thing.”

Phil nods, reaching for the lube again and generously re-coating the rest of his hand and wrist. “You’re amazing,” he says, drawing his hand out until just the tips of his fingers are still inside. “Ten years of guilty fantasies about you, and I didn’t even come close to reality.”

Clint clears his throat. “I, ah, I guess you just inspire me, babe.”

“I love when you call me that,” Phil says, and it’s hard to tell with the general sex flush he has going on, but Clint thinks he gets a little pinker. Clint’s heart swells with a warm, protective surge of love for this man, who can get embarrassed over pet names while he’s _fisting Clint with his robot hand_.

Seriously, Clint is so lucky.

“I’m adding the thumb, now,” Phil says, “deep breaths,” and Clint breathes with him, slow and deep, as he starts pushing back inside. It’s easy at first, Clint’s muscles loose from all the fingering, but then they start approaching the widest part of Phil’s hand, and he lets out a whining little breath at the burn of it.

Phil stops moving, his free hand going to rub soothingly over Clint’s belly. “Are you okay? Do you need me to pull out?”

“No, don’t—stay there, just—it’s so much,” Clint pants. “I can take it, I just… go slow? And maybe touch me somewhere else too?”

“I can do that,” Phil promises. He traces the fingers of his other hand gently over Clint’s balls. “You’re doing so well,” he says, and starts to move again, achingly slow, just rotating his hand a little, pulling it out and pushing it back in soft little movements while he plays with Clint’s balls, strokes his cock. When Clint relaxes, he bends to kiss one of Clint’s upraised knees. “That’s it, there you go,” he says, and nudges a little further in on his next tiny thrust. It’s almost hypnotic, like a massage or something, the muscle protesting the stretch then releasing into lassitude under gentle pressure. Clint lets himself float on the sensation, lets his focus narrow down to Phil’s hands and his voice and the fierce look in his eyes while he watches his hand sinking deeper and deeper into Clint’s body.

“One last big stretch,” Phil murmurs, and he bends to lick over the head of Clint’s cock again as he pushes the widest part of his hand through the muscle, knobby knuckles joined this time by the meat of his thumb, and Clint keens and trembles with the hot pleasure-pain of it for a long moment until it’s done, it’s through, and his hole is squeezing shut around—fuck, around Phil’s _wrist,_ and Phil’s entire hand is _inside his body,_ solid and huge and amazing.

“Phil,” he says, and his eyes burn with tears and his body is on fire and his cock is only half-hard but he feels like he’s about to come any minute and— “Phil.”

“I’m here,” Phil promises. He reaches up Clint’s body, grasping Clint’s reaching hand and holding tight. “I’m here, babe, I’ve got you, are you okay?”

“So good,” Clint manages to say, though hot tears are running down his temples. “S’just—intense, it’s so much, Phil. Stay with me,” and that’s stupid, where’s he gonna go right now anyway? But Clint still feels the need to say it.

“Always,” Phil promises, and Clint shudders, his body squeezing down involuntarily around the bulk inside him, sending jolts of electric pleasure from where Phil’s hand is pressing against his prostate. He clings tighter to Phil's other hand. He'd thought that fisting would be like getting fucked, just bigger, but it isn't; it's different, shattering and overwhelming. Phil's hand is _inside_ him, all the way inside him; they're locked together tight and deep. The pressure is everywhere, radiating jolts of sensation with each tiny motion; even Clint's breaths move them enough to jostle Phil's hand against his prostate a little. His whole attention is narrowed down to that few square inches of space between his hips, Phil's eyes, and the tight, reassuring hold Phil has on Clint's hand.

"Don't leave," Clint says, nonsensically. He's so full, he feels so much, he thinks that without Phil he might, he might go spinning off into space, or pass out, or something. "Phil, please."

"I won't, I promise I won't," Phil says. "Clint, I want to help, what can I do for you? What do you need? Should I pull out?"

That's the last thing Clint wants, but he also feels exposed, adrift in all the parts of his body where Phil isn't. He tries to get his brain to work, just for a minute and then it can go back to fizzy pleasure-haze. There's a solution, he knows, it's just on the tip of his tongue. He wants Phil to come up and hold him, but he wants Phil's fist to stay right where it is, but that isn’t—it doesn’t—

Oh. It does. It _can._

"Can you—would you mind—” he breaks off, not sure how to ask.

"Anything you need, Clint," Phil says. "Just tell me what it is."

"Can you take it off for a minute so you can come up here?" Clint asks. "It's just, I want you to stay there, but I kinda—want you to come up here too? I want to kiss you, I want to feel you next to me at the same time you're inside me, and then before, when we were sparring, you—so I thought maybe. But only if you want to, don't do it if it's, like, gross or hurts or anything, I don't want—”

"Clint," Phil stops his babbling, squeezing his hand in reassurance. "It's fine. I don't mind doing that if it's something you want. If you're sure?"

"Please," Clint says.

"You don't find it... unsettling?” Phil looks worried. “I mean, sparring is one thing, but…”

"It's part of you," Clint says, because really, what other explanation is needed? Clint will welcome any part of Phil into whatever he has: home, bed, life, body, it's all the same.

"All right," Phil says. "I'll need my other hand for a minute."

Clint lets go, reluctant. Phil reaches down, and there's a little twist of the hand inside him that jars a moan from him, and then Clint gasps as the weight of the forearm prosthetic falls the few inches to the mattress, shifting the hand and sending a bolt of pleasure up his spine.

"Easy, shh, I've got you, I'm coming," Phil murmurs, moving quickly up the bed and pressing himself to Clint's side. He wriggles his left arm under Clint's neck, cradling his head, and wraps his other arm around Clint's chest, holding him tight and pressing kisses into his hair. "Like this, sweetheart?" he asks, his hand rubbing over Clint's chest and belly.  

"Yes," Clint moans. It's amazing, it's everything; Phil is inside him, so deep and big; he's around him, so warm and strong; he's everywhere, and Clint can let go, can just feel it, can let all his attention focus in and _in,_ safe with Phil, around Phil, Phil around him, it’s—

"Safe," Clint says. "Perfect."

Phil holds him until he settles a little, the tremors in his limbs calming under the solid weight of Phil holding him, the gentle brush of his lips as he kisses Clint's temple, his cheekbone, the tip of his ear. It's almost like flipping a switch, his keyed-up nerves finally easing into pure languid pleasure. "Oh," he breathes. He feels warm and heavy all over, and when he bears down to feel the solid presence of Phil's hand, it sends shivers running over his skin.

"Mmm." Phil nuzzles the soft skin behind Clint's ear. "I felt that."

"Wait, you mean... you can still feel it?"

"I can if I want to." Phil traces over the lines of Clint's pecs, rubbing over his tender nipples. "It's got a short-range connection to the socket. I can control it remotely, too."

"You know, I was kidding when I said we should give it bluetooth,” Clint says, arching into Phil's touch and making a happy sound in his throat when the movement shifts Phil's hand.

"It's more secure than bluetooth." Phil leans in closer, nibbles on Clint's earlobe.

"But you can—oh god—you can control it even when you're not wearing it?"

"If I activate the setting. Does that bother you? I can turn it off."

"Are you kidding? This is amazing. Make it do something." Clint's mind is spinning with possibilities.

Phil chuckles a little, his chest vibrating against Clint's side with the rumble of it. "It may take me a minute, I'm still practicing this part." He takes a deep breath, then Clint feels the hand inside him stir to life again, a ripple of motion as the fingers flex, and holy _fuck_ but it feels incredible.

"Fuck, Phil, this—you— _shit,_ that's amazing," he manages. "Think of what we could do, we could have, like, a threesome all by ourselves. You could spitroast me, fuck my mouth while your hand's inside me, I'd be full of you at both ends."

"That is... not one of the use cases we discussed for the remote access," Phil says. He's trying to keep his voice level, but there's no disguising the way his cock jerks wetly against Clint's hip.

"Or, hmm—fuck that feels good—you could come ride me," Clint continues. "I could be, like, the filling in a Phil sandwich."

Phil's grip on Clint tightens, and his hand inside him twitches, the curled fingers rubbing against his inner walls. "I think I'd like that," he says.

Clint twists around enough to reach Phil's mouth. The way the movement shifts Phil's hand inside him again just makes everything better. He pours himself into the kiss, trying to push everything he's feeling through it; the pleasure, intense and engulfing, the safety, the connection, the absolute trust. It's filling him up just as surely as Phil's hand, brimming over in the tears that still spill unregarded down his face.

Oh. Phil's been kissing them away.

"Do it," he says into Phil's mouth. 

Phil pulls back just far enough to meet Clint's eyes. He looks hard at Clint for a moment, eyes searching, the familiar way he's been looking at Clint for years, though before he was usually trying to figure out whether Clint was actually field-ready or something. Clint looks back, drinking in the sight of him, face flushed and pupils blown and mouth kiss-stung red, for Clint. Because of Clint.

"Do it," Clint says again, his voice soft and full of love.

"Yes." Phil kisses him once more, quick and fierce, and then pulls away, disentangling himself from Clint, who can't stop a disappointed little huff of breath as Phil's departure leaves him cold.

"I'll be quick, I promise," Phil says, reassuring. He doesn't go far, just kneels on the bed beside Clint's hip, his knees brushing against Clint's skin. Clint reaches out and rests a hand on Phil's knee; he just wants to feel him, the rough hair over hot skin an anchor.

Phil flips the lube open. "Can you lend me a hand?" he asks, grinning, and Clint feels himself smiling back dopily as he holds out his hand for the bottle. He  squeezes some onto Phil's fingers, then closes it and sets it aside.

"Thanks," Phil says, reaching around behind himself. Clint can't look away from him. The broad curves of Phil's freckled bicep flex as he works himself open, his eyes fluttering shut. He lets out a soft moan, teeth catching on his bottom lip. 

He is the most beautiful thing Clint's ever seen.

"Get yourself ready for me," Phil says, his voice breathy as his arm moves.

Clint turns his attention back to his cock; weirdly, he's hardly even been thinking about it, the sensation of being fisted both more diffuse and more distracting than he's used to during sex. He's only about half hard, but when he reaches down he's surprised to find himself messy and slick already.

"Did I come already and not notice?" he blurts, incredulous.

Phil chuckles, though the sound is a little strained. "No," he says. "It's all the prostate massage; look." He furrows his brow in concentration, and the fingers inside Clint stroke slowly and firmly. It feels amazing, like an orgasm in slow motion, and Clint watches in awe as come drips out of him, distantly aware that he's making high-pitched, broken sounds.

"Fuck," he manages, as soon as he's regained his breath. "We are doing this all the time from now on."

"I suppose I could be—ah!—convinced," Phil says, head tipping back as his arm keeps working behind him. "But for now, didn't you have plans?"

"Right," Clint says. He reaches back down, gathering up the puddle of come that Phil has literally _fucked out of him with his fist_ (and holy shit, that is _so hot,_ Clint is the luckiest man in the history of sex) and using it as lube as he jacks himself to full hardness. It doesn't take much, honestly.

"I'm ready when you are, babe," he says, and Phil takes another few seconds to finish stretching himself before he brings his arm back around to the front, rolling his shoulder as though to work out a cramp.

"Brace me?" he asks, and uses Clint's offered hand to steady himself as he swings one leg over to straddle Clint. He takes a moment to get his balance, then reaches around to hold Clint's cock. He sinks down onto Clint in one long slide, and Clint sucks in a sobbing breath as Phil’s weight settles on his pelvis, pressing down against the solid mass of his own hand still inside Clint's body. It feels amazing, so good it almost hurts, Phil wrapped silky-hot around him, Phil's weight pressing down above him, Phil's hand hard and full inside him. It's exactly what Clint wanted, Phil _everywhere,_ filling and filled and moving and living. His Phil.

"Is this what you wanted?" Phil interrupts his epiphany. "Where should we go from here?"

"Whatever you want," Clint tells him, too overwhelmed to be a smartass. "Anything. Fuck me."

Phil catches his hand, brings it up to his mouth for a kiss. "Okay."

He starts out slow, just shifting his hips a little, letting Clint get used to the way his movements press him down against Phil's hand. When that goes okay—for values of okay that include Clint babbling "oh shit oh shit'' and grabbing on to Phil's thighs as hard as he can—he starts really moving, pushing himself up until only the head of Clint's cock is still inside him before lowering himself back down. Clint is pretty sure that in the same position he'd be lost in sensation by now, slamming himself down, chasing the orgasm, but Phil keeps his movements deliberate and slow, even as his thighs tremble beneath Clint's fingers with the strain.

And then he starts to move his hand, and Clint maybe loses his mind a tad.

Clint has known Phil for a long time. He's aware of the precision and focus Phil brings to things like, say, target practice or martial arts or planning a perfect op. But he never considered the obvious implication of this to his own sex life. What they've been doing so far has been amazing, but messy; improvised and a bit rough around the edges, lovemaking for two people who are still a little surprised that the option is open. What Phil is doing to him now is like, like Olympic-level. Gold medal, world champion, he's gonna go all the way!

It only takes two or three passes where Phil strokes over Clint's prostate in time with his steady rise and fall on Clint's dick for Clint to completely lose track of what he's doing and/or saying in response. He's pretty sure he's making noises, that he's grabbing desperately at any part of Phil he can reach, but how can any of that matter when his body is being shattered by bliss? He can feel Phil everywhere, filling or enveloping all of Clint's most intimate places, his voice saying hoarse endearments and his eyes fixed on Clint as though _Clint_ is the amazing one, which is patently untrue given that Clint is not the one currently winning the Nobel prize of fucking right now. He's been so turned on for so long that he'd normally be worried about stalling out, but there's no fear of that this time. He could come on Phil's fist easily, from the scorching tight grip of Phil's ass easier still; right now he's hanging on by his fingernails, because Phil has been turning him inside-out for what feels like hours, now, and he deserves one hell of an orgasm out of it. Clint's pretty sure he won't be good for much once Phil finishes with him, so he's doing his best to hold on, to keep himself hard so Phil can get his pleasure before Clint has some kind of sex blackout.

Clint gropes blindly for Phil's cock. It fills his hand so perfect, blood-hot and fat and wet at the tip, and when Clint twists his grip in a spiral up the shaft, Phil cries out, his rhythm faltering for the first time since he started his ride.

"Please, baby, come for me, please, I can't hold on," Clint begs. "I'm gonna—fuck!—I’m gonna lose it any second, you're so good inside, so good—it’s—Phil, _please_ —yes!” He crows in triumph when he feels it, Phil's cock surging in his hand for a moment before he begins to come. As Phil starts spraying his come over Clint's chest and belly, he somehow maintains enough presence of mind to curl his fingers over Clint's prostate one last time, firm and fast, and that paired with the clench of Phil's orgasm finally shoves Clint off the ledge into oblivion.

When his brain starts coming down from the white noise fizz of the most intense orgasm he’s ever had, Phil is gently trying to disentangle himself from Clint’s grabby hands. He whines, tightening his grip, unwilling to separate.

“I’m not going far,” Phil assures him, and his voice is wrecked, it’s so fucking sexy that it’s totally unfair Clint’s in no position to appreciate it properly. “I need to take care of you, that’ll be really uncomfortable if we leave it in too long.”

Clint maybe pouts a little, but lets go; the bulk of Phil’s hand inside him is starting to feel bigger than he remembers from before now that he doesn’t have the pressure of incipient orgasm taking the edge off. He holds out a hand automatically to help Phil balance as he sits up, though he can’t help a disappointed noise when his dick plops out of its nice warm happy spot. Phil dismounts with, Clint’s pleased to see, decidedly less grace than he used to get on; at least Clint isn’t the only one who’s sex-drugged right now.

Phil pauses at his side to lean over and kiss him, resting his hand on the mattress so he can take his time, nibbling softly at Clint’s lips with a tenderness that makes Clint’s breath catch. “I’ll be right back,” he says, soft but clear. He groans a little as he stretches out his limbs, his hip popping, but his face is still soft and happy, so Clint doesn’t say anything. God knows Clint’s got plenty of bits that play up from time to time; he’s not 25 anymore. 

And thank everything for that. He never had anything near this good in his life at 25, not the sex and especially not the man.

Phil rubs his hand reassuringly over Clint’s thigh before settling back between his legs and running a finger cautiously along Clint’s stretched-out rim, still clenched around the wrist of Phil’s prosthetic. Clint shudders at the feeling, an aftershock making him tighten up around it, punching a gasp from his lungs.

“Bear down, sweetheart,” Phil says. “I’ll be as gentle as I can.”

He feels Phil move the hand inside him, fingers moving to the same compact wedge that he used to get in, and then Phil bends down and slots the arm back on with a soft click before he starts drawing it out of Clint, slow and steady. Clint helps as much as he can; it doesn’t really hurt, but it’s uncomfortable, plus the sensation is decidedly unsexy. It’s still intimate, though, and he feels like he’s going to spill over with feelings, there’s so much connection and trust between them. He lets out a pained whine when the knuckles breach him, but then it’s basically over, the rest sliding out in a rush, and all he feels is empty ache.

“Come back,” he blurts, his voice wobbling alarmingly.  Phil looks up from where he’s been wrapping his arm in a towel. 

“Hey, hey,” Phil soothes, climbing back up the bed to wrap Clint up in his arms, towel and all. “I’ve got you.”

Clint buries his face in Phil’s shoulder and shakes. Phil just holds him, tight and sure, and murmurs reassurance and love while ignoring the hot tears dripping down his collarbone.

“‘M okay,” Clint says at last, sniffling. “Just. That was really intense. Good intense.” 

“For me too,” Phil says, kissing his wet cheek. “To see you like that, trusting me with that, just… surrendering your body. I’ve never felt anything like it, Clint. Thank you.”

“Pretty sure I should be thanking you,” Clint says, squeezing Phil’s shoulders. “I mean, that was the most amazing thing my genitals have ever experienced. I’m thinking of getting you a plaque.”

Phil laughs, delighted, and Clint feels warm down to his toes. “Please don’t,” he says, kissing Clint again. “I’m pretty sure Stark audits the fabricators, and I’ve heard enough about our ‘fuck shenanigans’ to last a lifetime.”

“Mmm, point,” Clint concedes. “I’ll think of something.”

“I’ve got everything I need,” Phil says, and Clint can hardly stand it, he’s so fucking sweet. Years ago, Clint would have wondered what the hell a guy like Phil was even doing with him, but now it’s enough for him to know that it’s exactly where Phil wants to be.

They drift for a few minutes, all warmth and soft kisses, but eventually the cooling mess that Clint is, let’s be honest, totally covered with starts to get too clammy and gross for even him. Phil, who is the best, brings over warm damp cloths and wipes off his sticky face before cleaning up the rest of him with a combination of tenderness and attention to detail that is pure Coulson. Afterward, he makes a face at his left arm; a quick wipedown isn’t going to be enough.

“I’m going to have to scrub this down,” he says. “I should wear a glove next time.”

Clint shivers happily at the promise of a next time, but he’s not eager for Phil to go spend who knows how long cleaning lube out of his finger plates. “Soak it in the laundry sink,” he suggests. “We can take it to the lab tomorrow and run it through the armor wash.”

“It _can_ go in the autoclave, I suppose,” Phil muses. “And if submersion’s a problem, better to know now.”

While Phil is gone, Clint gets up—very gingerly—and straightens the bed a little. He tosses the towel in the hamper and pulls the sheets that they’d kicked off back up the mattress. He pauses before he gets back in bed, looking at the dehumidifier on his nightstand where his hearing aids go. He’s been sleeping in them since Phil moved in, and truth be told, he could use a break.

He doesn’t usually like to sleep without them if anyone is around, but this is different; this is Phil. He takes them out, settling them in the case, then gets in bed. He hates the thick, muffling silence that descends when he’s not wearing his aids, hates not being able to hear if anything’s coming. “FRIDAY, silent protocol,” he says. His voice sounds funny in his chest, probably either too loud or too soft. The light near his ceiling blinks green three times in acknowledgement.

When Phil comes back in, he seems to pick up on Clint’s nerves instantly, and says something that Clint can’t quite catch but he’s pretty sure is some variation on “are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he says, and Phil blinks; okay, too loud. “I’ve got my aids out,” he continues, trying to modulate his tone. “Do you mind?”

Phil shakes his head, hurrying over to Clint’s side of the bed and sitting down so that their faces are level. “Whatever you need,” he says, his enunciation beautiful, so that even though his voice is distant and garbled, Clint knows exactly what he’s saying. “Should I do anything different?”

“Just—I’ve never really slept with anyone without them, so don’t be hurt if anything weird happens, okay?”

Phil nods, his face serious; Clint leans in to kiss it, and Phil kisses back.

Clint smiles. “Come on, let’s go to sleep.”

They settle in to their usual spots, Phil spooned up behind Clint with his short arm tucked under the pillow and his other one slung over Clint’s waist, and Phil turns off the lights.

Clint had been kind of worried about what would happen when he finally tried to sleep with Phil without his aids, but apparently he shouldn’t have been; he can feel Phil at his back, solid and safe, and the last thing he’s aware of before sleep takes him is the gentle rise and fall of his breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know better than to project a timeline at this point, but if it helps, finishing the last chapter of this is at the very top of my writing priority list, so here's hoping!
> 
> A million thanks to everyone who has read and sent feedback. It keeps me going.


	11. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is your husband on painkillers. (Good thing he's adorable.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! The end of the ride! 
> 
> So, so many thanks to my amazing betas, and to the wonderful friends who encouraged me every step of the way. This story will always be special to me for being the first novel-length work I ever completed. Thanks to all whose support, from beta to leaving comments or kudos, helped me achieve a lifelong goal. I love you all.

Phil Coulson is a hell of a cuddly drunk. It’s one of the things (one of the many things) that Clint loves about him; that when his inhibitions start to slip away, they reveal, not anger or bitterness or melancholy, but a seemingly inexhaustible well of sweetness and a desire to tell everyone he cares about how much they mean to him.

There’s a reason Phil has never been one to drink around his colleagues. He says it ruins the mystique. And apparently he’s managed to keep it up around the new SHIELD remarkably well.

Right up until he cracks his collarbone—again—and dislocates his shoulder catching one of his agents from going off a roof— _again_ —and Medical puts him on Percocet.

“Barton, you need to get here,” May says as soon as Clint picks up his phone, and his blood freezes in his veins in the seconds between then and when she finishes, “he’s on narcotics.”

He slumps against the wall of the range, legs turned to jelly with relief, and waves off Nat’s concerned eyebrow. “He talking yet?”

“Still sleeping, for now,” she says. “But it won’t last.”

He nods. “On my way.” His phone buzzes as he says it, with what he knows will be Phil’s current location, any access credentials he might need to get there, and a copy of Phil’s chart (as specified in the terms of their Agreement, because some people in this relationship whose names rhyme with Billip Joulson insist on trying not to worry their husbands and all it does is make said husbands keep themselves awake at night imagining a million worst-case scenarios for every “I’m fine” they hear, so they’ve struck a deal requiring full mutual disclosure of anything that lands them in Medical.)

Phil’s in Jersey this week, and Clint makes it to the facility within the hour. He’s escorted from the door to the medical wing, where May meets him, dismissing the other agent with a nod.

“How’s he doing?” Clint asks as they walk down the hall.

“Awake and up to his usual tricks,” she says, pulling a face. Phil always tries to say something sincere about how much she deserves happiness when he gets like this. She isn’t a fan.

“…proud of you,” Phil is telling Agent Simmons as they push open the door to his room. He’s behind a curtain, but his voice carries. “You’ve grown so much. Not like a plant, though. Like a person. Agent. Science agent…person.”

“I appreciate that, sir,” she says. “Please hold still, I need to finish strapping your arm so you can go home when your husband arrives.”

“Clint’s coming?” he sounds so happy it makes Clint’s heart flip over. 

“Came as soon as I heard, babe,” he calls, sticking his head behind the curtain.

“Clint!” Phil’s face lights up, and he tries to stand up, pulling his left arm right out of Agent Simmons’ hands.

“Hey, easy,” Clint soothes, crossing over to the bed and easing Phil back down, bending to brush a kiss over his scraped cheekbone. “I’m here, just lie back and let the doc look after you.”

“She’s very good,” Phil informs him seriously. “And she’s become an incredible agent. Did I tell you about how she went to another planet?”

“Yeah, you told me about that,” Clint says, running a soothing hand over Phil’s head, brushing a little grit out of his hair. 

“It was like Tatooine, only terrible,” Phil tells him.

“Isn’t terrible kind of the point of Tatooine?”

“Terrible-er. Dark all the time, like always winter and never Christmas.”

“That’s surprisingly literary of you, sir,” Simmons says, fastening off the last of the strapping on Phil’s arm.

"I love reading," Phil tells her solemnly.

"Oh?" She starts packing pill bottles and the familiar folded-over sheet of care instructions into a bag and hands it off to Clint. "What sorts of things do you like to read?"

"I've seen him with a little bit of everything," Clint cuts in, because he has a feeling that Phil would be embarrassed if Clint let him go into one of his adorably nerdy comic book lectures in front of one of his agents. "Come on, babe, let's get you home."

Phil perks up noticeably. "You're coming too? I thought you couldn’t get away until later.”

Clint might turn into goo right there in front of Simmons. "Just try and stop me.” He curls his arm around Phil's back, ready to help him stand up. "Anything in particular I should be looking out for, doc?” 

"He wrenched the socket for his prosthetic while he was dislocating his shoulder," Simmons sighs. "I don’t think there’s any permanent damage, but it wouldn’t be amiss to get a better scan at Stark Tower if you have a chance. At any rate, he’s not to use that arm at all until he's re-cleared. In fact, it wouldn't hurt him to leave the prosthetic off entirely while he's healing if he can."

"Shouldn't be a problem," Clint assures her. "I'll go off-duty for a while so I can fetch and carry while he's laid up."

Phil beams at him. "Clint is a really caring person," he tells Simmons. "He'll try to act like he's doing it for selfish reasons, but really, he has the biggest heart of anyone I know. It was one of the first things about him I fell in love with.”

Clint's ears get hot, and he ducks away from Simmons, who is looking at them like Phil is an adorable child and Clint is the last puppy in the pound.

Phil looks at Simmons again. “Did you know it’s our anniversary tomorrow? We’re going to—” 

“Phil,” Clint interrupts him. He doesn’t care if Simmons knows their anniversary plans, but Normal Phil would be embarrassed to have told her. “We need to go.”

"I've really missed you," Phil says, leaning his head back against Clint's shoulder. "I know it's only been two weeks, but it feels like forever." 

Clint has to kiss him for that. It's a moral imperative. He keeps it light in deference to the whole part where Phil's technically at work and his subordinate is watching them with heart-eyes, though Phil doesn't make it easy; he melts into Clint's embrace like a romance novel heroine, trusting his weight and balance to Clint and letting his mouth part gently beneath the slight pressure of the kiss. When Clint pulls reluctantly away, Phil lets out a long sigh and cuddles—there’s no other word for it—back into Clint's shoulder.

"Oh, sweetheart, you are so high right now," Clint says. He's trying to send forget-you-ever-saw-this signals with his eyes to Simmons over Phil's shoulder, but to no avail; she looks about two seconds away from snapping a picture and setting it as her desktop theme.

“I took the liberty of taking his phone away,” she tells Clint, nodding toward the medication bag he’s holding. “He kept trying to call people.”

Clint thinks of the people that Phil might have been planning on calling, and laughs. “Probably for the best.”

“I sent Kate and Daisy a text,” Phil chimes in. “I told them we were proud of them. I put the gold medal emoji so they’d know they are the best.” 

“I’m sure they appreciated that,” Clint assures him, levering him carefully to his feet. “Come on, Phil, time to go home.”

  

* * *

 

It’s not the way Clint envisioned them spending the evening, but there’s something dear about it anyway; somehow, just having Phil around, soft and trusting and open, relying on Clint to take care of him, is every bit as relationship-affirming as the boisterous reunion sex he’d been planning on. He gets Phil tucked up into bed, bad side well supported with some of their many firm and unusually-shaped pillows (equally useful for sex and ergonomics), and makes sure to put his next dose of medicine and a bottle of chilled water in easy reach on the nightstand.

“Watch him, Luck,” he orders, and Lucky jumps up on the bed with a whuff, settling his body right across Phil’s legs.

“Good boy,” Clint says.

Phil buries the fingers of his good hand in Lucky’s soft fur. “Hi, Lucky,” he says, voice a bit over-enunciated in a way that tells Clint he’s gonna pass out soon. “You’re such a good dog. Thank you for taking care of Clint and Kate.” 

Lucky barks happily, tail going a mile a minute, and Clint decides they’re safe enough where they are for now.

“I’ll be back in a little while, hon, I just need to close up for the night,” he tells Phil, who nods at him in the middle of telling Lucky that he’s a good boy, yes he is.

They’d stopped by the lab on the way upstairs for a scan. Phil didn’t manage to do any permanent damage to his socket, so all they have on the agenda for the next little while is rest and recuperation. Clint updates his grocery order to account for cooking anniversary dinner at home rather than going out somewhere, and checks on the box in the fridge where the top tier of their wedding “cake”—which had actually been a tower of purple-frosted donuts—is thawing out, in accordance with first anniversary tradition. Things seem okay, though the frosting looks a little runny. He hopes he hasn’t done something wrong; all the online advice he was able to find was for cake cake, not donut cake. Ah well.

Phil’s asleep by the time he gets back to their bedroom, and Clint allows himself five solid minutes to go all sappy over how beautiful Phil’s face is in the lamplight before he strips down to his boxers and crawls into bed.

Phil’s sore as hell the next day, so Clint is able to convince him to take his meds instead of toughing it out. He understands the reluctance to take too many painkillers, but there’s a time and place for stepping down, and that time is not the day after you dislocate your shoulder and wrench the socket where your robot arm attaches. Clint winces in sympathy with every pained breath Phil takes, and consoles himself by doing everything he can to make Phil comfortable. Phil, for his part, watches a lot of television, drafts a lot of appreciative notes to people that FRIDAY conveniently quarantines for Phil’s review when he’s sober, and says something sweet to Clint every time he enters his field of view. By dinnertime, a steady day of having his qualities as a husband, hero, and human being lavishly praised has Clint feeling permanently hot-faced and all melty around the edges. He wouldn’t have chosen to spend his first wedding anniversary with one of them on the DL, but if it had to happen, at least they’re both safe, the prognosis is good, and the recovery can proceed in the comfort of their own home.

In truth, it’s a tiny bit of a luxury, knowing that they’ll be together for a few weeks with little chance of a mission pulling them off to various corners of the globe. Hopefully, once Phil’s healed up a little, it’ll be almost like a vacation.

He settles Phil and his immobilized arm on a chair where he can watch Clint cook, because the other thing about painkillers is that they make him kind of clingy.

It’s not like Clint minds. A year of marriage, and still sometimes it just hits him like a truck, that Phil was dead and now he’s not, that Clint of all people somehow was the one who got a second chance. He hopes he never learns to take it for granted.

He makes them lasagna: comfort food, plus plenty of leftovers for later. Phil even lets Clint fill his plate; it’s almost like old times. Phil tangles his feet with Clint’s under the table and pauses every couple of bites to smile at him dreamily. Clint doesn’t mind. He kind of wants to do the same, honestly.

For dessert, Clint pulls the bakery box out of the fridge.

“So, everyone said you were supposed to freeze the top of your wedding cake and eat it on your first anniversary,” he tells Phil. “But I don’t know if donut cake actually works that way.”

“It’s the thought that counts,” Phil says, smiling sweetly at Clint, his eyes not quite in focus.

“We’ll see how it goes.” He dishes them each up one of the donuts. They don’t really look great, honestly; they’re kind of deflated and sad looking, the purple frosting weeping onto the plates. Clint poured them each a flute of sparkling juice, which was perfectly fine to have while taking painkillers. 

“To our first year,” he said, holding up his glass.

Phil beamed at him. “And the happiest of my life,” he said, managing to clink glasses without disaster. “May it be the first of many.”

Clint sniffled, swallowing down the sweet and fizzy juice. “Me too, babe,” he said, clearing his throat. “Me, too.”

As it turns out, year-old formerly-frozen donuts taste terrible. It’s okay, though. Clint has a box of fresh ones from the same bakery, obtained as a backup just in case.

He’d taken a bite out of each one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **DVD Extras:**
> 
>  
> 
> My favorite beta comment from this story was the following: 
> 
>  
> 
> _And now we have Clint moping about not getting a hug, pining for a hug, and strangely aroused by donuts_
> 
>  
> 
> _Perfect_
> 
>  
> 
> Chat transcript about Clint and Phil's wedding, which ended up not making the final outline:
> 
>  
> 
> _and maybe Clint is all "I want that, I want it so much, but I know that my name is out there and yours can't be, is there a way to do it and keep it out of the FOIA requests? should we use covers? Only I don't want to be fake married I want it for real"_
> 
>  
> 
> _and Phil says:_
> 
>  
> 
> _I'll call the President._
> 
>  
> 
> _and the President gives them a secret black-ops wedding hookup_
> 
>  
> 
> _and Phil makes Talbot come because it's hilarious_
> 
>  
> 
> _Talbot gives them a super traditional and borderline useless wedding present_
> 
>  
> 
> _like a silver... something_
> 
>  
> 
> _that they use for other than its intended purpose in their marital home_
> 
>  
> 
> What's next for me? Well, in addition to the ongoing hijinks and shenanigans of Passepartout, I will be resuming normal posting on My Heart In Hiding! It's too soon to give a definitive date for the next chapter, but I am aiming for an October posting date. I'm also feeling like it's about time to revisit All Our Strength and All Our Sweetness, so stay tuned!


End file.
